Hobbies
Jazz piano, poker, and jogging.

Clubs
Math Team, Science Olympiad, Chess Club, Bridge Club

Experience
AMC-AIME-USAMO, NYSML-ARML, Hampshire College Summer Studies in Mathematics, Canada/USA Mathcamp, Columbia University Science Honors Program

Biography
My interest in science and math began when I was young and has progressed a lot since then. I used to learn a lot watching science documentaries my dad taped for me. In elementary and middle school, I was an avid reader of science-fiction; Isaac Asimov was my favorite author. I also enjoyed reading non-technical books on subjects like space travel, relativity, and quantum physics. I'm the kind of person who becomes obsessed with something: at any given time there is one thing that consumes most of my thought. In middle school, I went through several phases where I was obsessed with things that weren't very intellectually useful, e.g. Magic cards and computer games. The first serious self-study I did was in eighth grade, when I became obsessed with BattleBots (televised robot-combat event). Hoping it would help me built a better ‘bot, I did a lot of reading on physics, electronics, and mechanical engineering. The robot I was working on with my friends never got built, but I continued my reading. In the summer before ninth grade, my parents and I moved to the town of Great Neck, where I currently live. I'm very proud of my high school Great Neck South, and I feel very indebted to it. The best thing about Great Neck South for me was that when I got there as a freshman, there were a bunch of students who were a lot smarter than I was. I looked up to them, and they were very helpful and kind. The school also has some very good math and science teachers and a flexible and understanding administration who let me take whatever courses I wanted. At Great Neck South I became involved with the math team and math contests. In ninth grade I quickly learned that though I was capable of some occasional clever ideas, I didn't have much skill in problem solving: the ability to make progress on a problem that you initially don't know how to solve. I started doing a lot of problems that I found in books or on the internet, and I continue to practice contest problems to this day. I try to get more out of these problems than just learning tricks: I work on my general heuristic (problem solving) strategy, and I try to think meta-mathematically about the problems. For example,after seeing the solution to a problem in Euclidean Geometry I often ask myself "why did that construction work?" Besides contests, I'm also interested in "real math", and I enjoy reading undergraduate-level textbooks. This interest has been nurtured by the two summer programs I have attended: Hampshire College Summer Studies in Mathematics (HCSSiM), and Canada/USA MathCamp. Though I enjoy physics just as much as math, I haven't spent nearly as much time on it so far during my high school career, but I'll be sure to do as much physics as possible during the next month before I get to the camp.