Enrollment in the ORMC Summer 2025 classes will open on Monday, 6/2. The Summer program is not open to the academic year students. It is meant to give children outside of our regular ranks a taste of the Math Circle culture.
ORMC will be in session on Sundays: 6/29, 7/13, 7/20, 7/27, 8/3, 8/10, 8/17, 8/24, and 8/31.
No classes on Sunday, 7/6, the Independence Day weekend.
UCLA Department of Mathematics offers an undergraduate math course, Introduction to Discrete Structures, for official UCLA credits to high school and college students not affiliated with UCLA this Summer. The course covers a multitude of topics ranging from sets to graph theory. It will look great on a college application!
Spring 2025 Quarter Information
ORMC Spring 2025 enrollment is now closed.
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, as well as travel, excused absences.
ORMC will be in session on Sundays: 4/6, 4/13, 4/20, 4/27, 5/4, 5/11, 5/18, 6/1, and 6/8.
No classes on Sunday, 5/25, the Memorial Day weekend.
On Sunday, 6/8, we will have a guest lecture for the Advanced 2 and 3 students as well as a ceremony for graduating seniors. The lecture will be given in the IPAM Auditorium by Prof. Alexander Givental, UC Berkeley.
Parents' Club: on Sunday, 4/27, at 10:00 AM - 12:00 PM, in Boelter Hall 3400, Prof. Pablo Fajgelbaum from UCLA Department of Economics will give ORMC parents a lecture on tariffs and international trade, followed by Q&A.
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.
Spring 2025 Schedule:
Class
Beginners 1
Beginners 2
Intermediate 1
Intermediate 2
Time and room #
A: 10:00 - 10:50 AM, MS 6221
B: 11:10 AM - 12:00 PM, MS 6221
C: 11:10 AM - 12:00 PM, MS 5117
A: 10:00 AM - 12:00 PM, MS 3974
B: 1:00 - 3:00 PM, MS 6201
C: 10:00 AM - 12:00 PM, MS 6201
A: 4:00 - 6:00 PM, MS 6221
B: 4:00 - 6:00 PM, MS 3974
A: 4:00 - 6:00 PM, MS 6201
B: 4:00 - 6:00 PM, MS 6627
Fall 2024 school grade
2 - 4
4 - 6
5 - 7
7 - 9
Class
Advanced 1
Advanced 2
Advanced 3
AMC 8
AMC 10/12
Olympiads
Chess Club
Time and room #
A: 4:00 - 6:00 PM, MS 5117
B: 4:00 - 6:00 PM, MS 5118
A: 4:00 - 6:00 PM, MS 5127
B: 4:00 - 6:00 PM, MS 5137
4:00 - 6:00 PM
MS 6229
1:00 - 3:00 PM
MS 5117
1:00 - 3:00 PM
MS 3974
1:00 - 3:00 PM
MS 6229
1:00 - 3:00 PM
MS 6221
Fall 2024 school grade
9 - 11
10 -12
The 6/8 schedule: no chess club, all other classes at their usual times.
MS 3974: Beginners 2A, Beginners 2B, Intermediate 1B.
MS 6221: Beginners 1A, Beginners 1B, AMC 8, Intermediate 1A.
MS 6627: Beginners 2C, AMC 10/12, Intermediate 2B.
MS 6620 (departmental lounge): Beginners 1C, Olympiads, Intermediate 2A.
Summer 2024 ORMC students and instructors wearing Jane Street t-shirts with a cool math problem: Cut a cake randomly n times. What is the expected number of pieces?
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 1 student, Pranav Boyapati, has started a free on-line program, called Enlightening Math, teaching pre-Algebra and Algebra I lessons to students in grades 4 - 7. A few of his friends have joined the initiative.
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.
This is the third year that Leonardo (Leo) Lam, currently an Advanced 2 student at ORMC, and his team of assistant instructors are running an ORMC satellite program in the Upland Unified School District. The program began with a Circle at a local high school teaching the ORMC curriculum to math-inclined students from three elementary schools in the district. Leo and his team were the first to start a Math Circle in the Inland Empire region of CA. In year two, the Circle grew to include students from five out of ten elementary schools in the district. Recently, Leo established a second ORMC satellite at a local elementary school in partnership with the school's Saturday absence recovery program. Leo also improved the quality of instruction by recruiting and training his high school peers. In year three, student participation has reached nine out of ten elementary schools. Moving forward, Leo's goal is to further expand the satellite program, providing more support to the district's initiative in absence recovery.
Thank you notes
ORMC would like to thank the Circle's major donor, Ms. Sierra Chen, for her unwavering support.
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 four years in a row.
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 Mr. Richard Rasiej for covering the cost of our AI-powered chat-bot project. We hope that after some training, the bot would be able to respond to the majority of the incoming ORMC emails. On top of that, Richard has pledged to donate 10K to the Circle this year. Thank you very much!
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.
Recent News
College admissions 2025
Fateh Aliyev will major in pure math at Princeton.
Leonardo Lam is accepted to Harvey Mudd and UC Berkeley, and waitlisted at Caltech. All this at 14 years of age!
Leo Lhert has chosen to attend UCLA majoring in math.
A former ORMC student and later volunteer instructor, Hillary Tong, has gotten her admission letters and is now choosing between Harvard and USC.
Joshua Wang will double major in math and econ at University of Chicago.
Tiger Zhang is choosing between MIT and Harvard, leaning towards MIT. He plans to major in math.
Math competitions 2025
Tiger (Qiao) Zhang will be competing on the US national team at IMO 2025. This will be his second IMO. As we all know, Tiger won gold in 2024. Good luck, Tiger!
Sylesh Sundaresan (grade 8) was placed at the top 1% in the nation on AMC 8, getting the Honor Roll of Distinction.
Leya Daftuar (grade 4), Nina Haubner (grade 6), Leonardo Ka (grade 8), Srivibhav Mandapaka (grade 5), 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.
Fateh Aliyev, Sai Chamarthy, Alicia Fei, Patrick Liang, Prince Rohatgi, Aidan Shin, and Daniel Sun qualified for AIME on AMC 10/12.
Recent Fires
ORMC ran a program helping the children who have temporarily lost access to school due to the recent fires.
An ORMC instructor, Zoe Heidersbach, taught remotely a few lessons for first grade students having no access to school. The curriculum was a mix of Eureka math and Math Kangaroo training. As the schools started teaching remotely, this class closed, but there opened a class for second grade students, and Zoe took it.
An ORMC instructor, Michael Salko, taught remotely a few lessons for fourth grade students having no access to school. The curriculum was a mix of Singapore math and Math Kangaroo training. As the schools started teaching remotely, this class closed, but there opened another class for fourth grade students, and Mike took it.
Prof. Lara Dolecek, an ORMC parent, was teaching remotely a class of fifth grade students having no access to school. The class was based on the standard 5th grade math curriculum occasionally spiced up with ORMC handouts.
Prof. Raghu Meka, an ORMC parent, took a class of sixth grade students having no access to school. The class was based on the book Modern Algebra, Structure and Method by Mary P. Dolciani. As an icebreaker, the first class was on ciphers, based on an ORMC handout.
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!
