Enrollment in regular ORMC classes will open on 11/25 and close in the morning of 12/18. Returning students should apply to the same classes they attended in the Fall 2025 quarter.
The Circle will be in session on Sundays: 1/11, 1/18, 1/25, 2/1, 2/15, 2/22, 3/1, and 3/8.
Fall 2025 Quarter Information
Enrollment in all ORMC classes is now closed.
The Circle will be in session on Sundays: 9/28, 10/5, 10/12, 10/19, 10/26, 11/2, 11/9, 11/16, and 11/23.
Attendance policy: if a student misses two or more classes for the reasons we do not consider excused absences, the student may be dis-enrolled from the program. We do not consider taking part in other activities such as sports, music, theater, robotic competitions as well as travel, excused absences.
Research for high school students: this year, we have a vertical integration pilot project aimed at involving qualified high school students in research projects at the department.
AMC competitions:
AMC 10/12 A: Wednesday, 11/5, 6:00 - 8:00 PM, in Kaplan Hall 135.
AMC 10/12 B: Thursday, 11/13, 6:00 - 8:00 PM, in Kaplan Hall A65.
Guest lecture for Advanced students: on Sunday, 11/23, 4:00 - 6:00 PM in MS 5200. Bright Harvest is the name of a project at Caltech that is likely to start supplying the Earth with inexpensive, unlimited, and ecologically clean energy from space in about ten years from now. A graduate student involved in the project, Alex Ayling, has kindly agreed to complement the documentary about the project with a presentation, followed by Q&A.
Parents' Club: please let us know what you'd like to hear about, from college admissions to AI to home insurance to cosmology and quantum mechanics.
Donations:
Donations form a crucial component of the Circle's budget. Quarterly donations at the level of $300 per student are needed to sustain the high quality of our program. Please consider ORMC as a part of your giving plans this season! Donations are not a factor in enrollment decisions and do not entitle your child to enrollment.
ORMC may designate some Math Circles as ORMC satellites. A request for such a designation should be sent to the ORMC director. To qualify, a Math Circle
1. has to be free-of-charge for participating students;
2. have a substantial part, 50% or more, of their curriculum based on the ORMC curriculum;
3. have instructors with ORMC training; and
4. operate in close contact with ORMC so that ORMC could attest to the quality of instruction.
An ORMC Advanced 2 student, Thomas, has founded the Inspire Math Circle in Santa Clarita, CA. Knowing how difficult it is to learn advanced mathematics outside school and how ORMC elevated him to a thriving math student, Thomas teamed up with his math team buddy, collaborated with a local student organization, and recruited additional instructors to help teach younger students. They started with a challenging yet interesting curriculum, including number theory and combinatorics, and ran a test program for 4-6th graders. In June, the program expanded to include 1st to 3rd graders, introducing critical thinking skills based on the ORMC curriculum. The program is thriving and has received many positive reviews. Inspire Math Circle intends to continue spreading the love of math to young students with a possible plan to help more students in the Valley.
Pranav Boyapati, one of our ORMC Advanced 1 students, has started a free online program called Enlightening Math. He’s teaching Pre-Algebra and Algebra I in a fun, engaging way that also brings in the problem-solving style of math circles. The program has been running successfully for over a year, with students joining from different parts of the country. Classes happen on Saturdays over Zoom, and a few volunteers have helped Pranav get things rolling: https://www.enlighteningamc.org/
An ORMC Intermediate 2 student, Brandon Tso, has started a satellite Math Circle at Eagle Rock Elementary School, a magnet school within the Los Angeles Unified School District, for students in grades 3 - 5.
An ORMC Advanced 2 student, Lawrence Pang, along with his six friends, continues their ORMC Satellite Program at Wittmann Elementary School. The class is currently in its 4 year, currently having 25 students and 4 instructors. Many students and parents gave lots of positive feedback and have enjoyed the active learning and engagement.
Thank you notes
ORMC would like to thank the Circle's major donor, Ms. Sierra Chen, for her unwavering support.
Ms. Lily Hsu has pledged to donate 45K to the Circle over the course of five years. Thank you, Lily!
The Circle would like to thank Dr. Richard Rasiej for his continuous support, including covering the cost of the AI-powered chat-bot and making the latest YouTube videos on game theory.
The Circle would like to thank the Schlessinger family for providing food and beverages for the beginning and/or end of the quarter parties for ORMC instructors for five years in a row. They do it even after their child has stopped attending the Circle!
The Circle would like to thank the Berenji family for their generous support of the Circle. They have donated about 5K this year only!
ORMC would like to thank Jane Street for their 10K donation.
ORMC would like to thank Prof. Sucharit Sarkar for supporting the Circle through his NSF RTG grant.
The Circle would like to thank all the parents helping with fundraising.
Fateh Aliyev will major in pure math at Princeton.
Raymond Cai will major in physics at Northwestern University.
Kylar Cheng will attend UC Berkeley.
Rose Cohen will major in math at Harvey Mudd.
Cole Grossman will attend University of Chicago possibly majoring in math.
Leonardo Lam is accepted to Harvey Mudd and UC Berkeley, and waitlisted at Caltech. All this at 14 years of age!
Alexander Landau will major in applied math at UC Berkeley.
Hannah Lee will major in chemistry at Northwestern University.
Leo Lhert has chosen to attend UCLA majoring in math.
Sebastian Martinez will be majoring in physics at UCLA.
Rohan Mathew will attend UC Berkeley majoring in applied Math as a Regents’ and Chancellor’s Scholar.
Daria Sherkhanova will attend Hobart and William Smith College.
Sahana Sri will be majoring in neuroscience at UC Berkeley.
A former ORMC student and later volunteer instructor, Hillary Tong, has gotten her admission letters and is now choosing between Harvard and USC.
Jordan Touevsky will major in applied math at UCLA.
Joshua Wang will attend Stanford University.
Tiger Zhang is choosing between MIT and Harvard, leaning towards MIT. He plans to major in math.
Math competitions 2025
Tiger (Qiao) Zhang just won his second IMO gold (2024 and 2025)! We were very fortunate to have Tiger first as a student and then as a volunteer instructor for a number of years.
31 ORMC students taking Math Kangaroo with ORMC were placed 1 - 20 in the nation, including two 1st places. One of the latter is Andrew Chang, 4th grade, 1st place in the state and nationwide. Many more were placed high taking part in the competition at their schools.
Sylesh Sundaresan (grade 8) was placed at the top 1% in the nation on AMC 8, getting the Honor Roll of Distinction.
Jacob Adler (grade 8), Leya Daftuar (grade 4), Nina Haubner (grade 6), Leonardo Ka (grade 8), Srivibhav Mandapaka (grade 5), Vihaan Nawathe (grade 8), Sriram Surapaneni (grade 6), Kelly Yeung (grade 6), and Hannah Zhu (grade 6) were placed at the top 5% in the nation on AMC 8, getting the Honor Roll.
Candice Yan (grade 6) was awarded the Maryam Mirzakhani AMC 8 Certificate for young Women in Mathematics Winners. Candice scored 24/25.
Fateh Aliyev, Sai Chamarthy, Alicia Fei, Patrick Liang, Prince Rohatgi, Aidan Shin, and Daniel Sun qualified for AIME on AMC 10/12.
ORMC instructor makes a breakthrough in combinatorics
An ORMC instructor, Nikita Gladkov, with co-authors, has found a highly non-trivial counter-example to an important hypothesis in combinatorics, called the bunk-bed conjecture. The work has generated so much interest in the mathematical community that they made a video about the breakthrough even before the paper was published in a peer-reviewed magazine:
Two ORMC Students won gold on India International Math Competition
ORMC students, Atticus Stewart and Daniel Sun, won gold at InIMC Summer 2024 individual competitions, Keystage 3 and Keystage 2 (for younger students) respectively. Hats off to Atticus and Daniel!
