HMMT Recap
by ihatemath123, Feb 17, 2025, 12:49 AM
The day started at 6:00 AM when our bus to MIT left. On the bus, we played a couple of games of Avalon and then suddenly an hour had passed and we had arrived. Shiqiao went to the same middle school as one of the HMMT volunteers, and so we got ourselves a private tour guide. He led us to the "Banana Lounge", where we played a . Then we had to stop because the team round was starting soon.
By the way, our team was "PEA Chestnuts" (also abbreviated as PEACH on the guts round scoreboard)
We then went over to a different auditorium for the individual rounds.
Evan did the best on our team, with a 666 (with above-average distributions on each round). Andrew had a 664, and I had a 556. Shiqiao somehow got a 246?! Idk rn but hopefully I can qual for HMIC? kinda worried though since none of us top 10'ed in anything. Lunch was super crowded and everybody got like two slices of pizza. I went with Shiqiao, Anthony and Grant to get boba. The line was so long that we couldn't even pick up our orders before guts started (except me lol i got my order
).
The guys who couldn't stick around for awards left with our coach to take a bus back to school. Grant had lost his duffel bag earlier on in the day, so he went around the campus retracing his steps. Ultimately, he didn't find it, so we all just headed to awards. The integration bee was cool – Yusuf Sheikh too strong. There was an , which was really cool. I submitted an answer but it turned out to be wrong
Then came awards. We were quite sure at least Evan would get top 10 in at least one round, but to our surprise there was nothing – cutoffs on each round appeared to be either insane 6/10's or 7/10's, at the very least. By the time the combinatorics round was finished being announced things were looking grim for our team. Next up was the team round awards. We got sixth – it was a disappointment that our total had only somehow come out to 244, but at least we got an award. Then came guts: we were kicked off the top 10 leaderboard just before the leaderboard froze, but in the last couple minutes we snagged an educated guess on round 7 that brought us back to tied 10th. Ayy, tied 10th is better than what we were expecting tbh. Overall individuals was next, none of our team was mentioned unfortunately.
And at least came sweepstakes. As 10th, 9th, 8th, 7th were announced, we lost a little bit of hope each time. I already texted the team GC saying we didn't get top 10 in sweepstakes. And then NEVERMIND HAHA BECAUSE WE GOT SIXTH?! Came as a pleasant surprise to us. Even though we dropped off from last year, we still did pretty good. Congratulations to Alphastar for their much deserved victory!
The MOP meetup afterwards was pretty fun. The first people Grant and I bumped into were Alan Bu and Max Xu. In their respective typical fashions, Alan congratulated us on our team placement while Max lamented that we hadn't won. We talked with lots of people, got lots of photos, played BS Poker and did some weird things with long sticks that Espen Slettnes had brought. At 11:00 or so my parents picked Grant and I up to go to the hotel, concluding a very long (but fun) day.
Mathwise, this year's HMMT was especially good – the individual rounds were slightly easier than the year before, which made the problem solving a lot more pleasant. The quality of problems was also just really good, even for HMMT standards. Those two mentioned problems on the Guts round were insane, and the team round had some jewels too. It would be so nice if HMMT wrote the AMC and AIME every year.
edit: yay 35th qualed hmic!
By the way, our team was "PEA Chestnuts" (also abbreviated as PEACH on the guts round scoreboard)
)We then went over to a different auditorium for the individual rounds.
condition and validly assuming 
was the orthocenter), but this left me with a nasty trigbash. I spent a ton of time working it out, only to get the wrong answer at the end. I went to #10 next, since it looked a lot like one of the EMCC problems I'd written this year (accuracy p9). I figured out how to theoretically compute the answer, but there were like ten steps and I decided it wasn't worth it to do every single one. Then, I went to #8. I set up some equations and ended up with a single equation in one variable, but after the test I found out I misread the extraction anyways, making it much harder to obtain from my variable. I didn't have enough time to return to #6 by now, so I just checked #1 through #5.
.Evan did the best on our team, with a 666 (with above-average distributions on each round). Andrew had a 664, and I had a 556. Shiqiao somehow got a 246?! Idk rn but hopefully I can qual for HMIC? kinda worried though since none of us top 10'ed in anything. Lunch was super crowded and everybody got like two slices of pizza. I went with Shiqiao, Anthony and Grant to get boba. The line was so long that we couldn't even pick up our orders before guts started (except me lol i got my order
).
as 
)The guys who couldn't stick around for awards left with our coach to take a bus back to school. Grant had lost his duffel bag earlier on in the day, so he went around the campus retracing his steps. Ultimately, he didn't find it, so we all just headed to awards. The integration bee was cool – Yusuf Sheikh too strong. There was an , which was really cool. I submitted an answer but it turned out to be wrong
![\[\int_{-\infty}^{\infty} \frac{\lfloor x \rfloor}{e^x + e^{-x}}.\]](http://latex.artofproblemsolving.com/f/5/3/f53fafc2f7fc0d7a13a66ae7091927411f8785b0.png)
Then came awards. We were quite sure at least Evan would get top 10 in at least one round, but to our surprise there was nothing – cutoffs on each round appeared to be either insane 6/10's or 7/10's, at the very least. By the time the combinatorics round was finished being announced things were looking grim for our team. Next up was the team round awards. We got sixth – it was a disappointment that our total had only somehow come out to 244, but at least we got an award. Then came guts: we were kicked off the top 10 leaderboard just before the leaderboard froze, but in the last couple minutes we snagged an educated guess on round 7 that brought us back to tied 10th. Ayy, tied 10th is better than what we were expecting tbh. Overall individuals was next, none of our team was mentioned unfortunately.
And at least came sweepstakes. As 10th, 9th, 8th, 7th were announced, we lost a little bit of hope each time. I already texted the team GC saying we didn't get top 10 in sweepstakes. And then NEVERMIND HAHA BECAUSE WE GOT SIXTH?! Came as a pleasant surprise to us. Even though we dropped off from last year, we still did pretty good. Congratulations to Alphastar for their much deserved victory!
The MOP meetup afterwards was pretty fun. The first people Grant and I bumped into were Alan Bu and Max Xu. In their respective typical fashions, Alan congratulated us on our team placement while Max lamented that we hadn't won. We talked with lots of people, got lots of photos, played BS Poker and did some weird things with long sticks that Espen Slettnes had brought. At 11:00 or so my parents picked Grant and I up to go to the hotel, concluding a very long (but fun) day.
Mathwise, this year's HMMT was especially good – the individual rounds were slightly easier than the year before, which made the problem solving a lot more pleasant. The quality of problems was also just really good, even for HMMT standards. Those two mentioned problems on the Guts round were insane, and the team round had some jewels too. It would be so nice if HMMT wrote the AMC and AIME every year.
edit: yay 35th qualed hmic!
This post has been edited 1 time. Last edited by ihatemath123, Feb 22, 2025, 12:58 AM
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