Hobbies
DDR, various puzzles, Dungeons & Dragons, Rubik's Cube, reading

Clubs
Math Team, Science Olympiad Team, Peer Tutoring

Experience
AMC 12/AIME. 9th grade: 124 in AMC 12, 5 in AIME. 10th grade: 136 and 6, respectively. 11th grade: 144 and 8, respectively. USAMTS, ARML, USACO, PROMYS 2002-2005.

Biography
I was born in Russia in September 1988, and moved to Illinois when I was 8. Now I live in New Jersey and attend Princeton High School. I am in 11th grade, though I'll be officially going to Princeton University next year. I've been taking math and computer science classes at Princeton University through a program offered by my high school. This program was originally the reason I decided to attend high school in the first place, since I was home schooled before. (My mother decided that home schooling would be a good idea when I spend a few years in the U.S. education system and forgot how to do long division.) Unfortunately, I don't have an opportunity to take physics courses through this program since I never took physics through my school. Physics has been a strong interest of mine since I started reading about it because I had nothing better to do. During high school, I took physics courses over EPGY because I didn't meet the prerequisites for the physics course at my school (which involved biology and chemistry). I took the AP: Mechanics in 2003 and E&M in 2004. I was first introduced to this competition by the AP Physics teacher at my school, and I've participated since then, not expecting to get very far, though apparently I did, even if I say so myself. Several friends of mine were on the U.S. Physics Team last year, and that was an inspiration to do well. I'm more interested in math as much, and probably more, than I am in physics. This is very fortunate, since the two subjects complement each other very well. Theoretical physics problems and mathematics problems require the same sort of thinking, and I think I've gotten quite good at it. Unfortunately, the interests sometimes interfere. I would have had to choose between this program and MOSP, if I'd gotten as far as MOSP, so it's just as well that I didn't. Another strong interest of mine is programming and Computer Science, though I'm not nearly as good at it as at math and physics. I often write little programs in my free time. In fact, I wrote a halfway functional IRC client this winter in python. (Unfortunately, the interpreter sometimes takes up 50% of my system resources.) As an example my nerdhood, I am using the command line utility "wc" to count the words in this essay, and I often write bits of code to reformat something like a project writeup to HTML. My other free time is spent doing various typically nerdy things. Sometimes I play DDR or Dungeons and Dragons with my friends, sometimes I read a book (Terry Pratchett is a favorite author of mine). I'd like to say that I read math and physics textbooks in my free time as well, but I stopped doing that a year or or two ago. Lately, I've been more inclined to do normal things like going to movies with my friends. I fear I'm losing my geek status. I've always enjoyed meeting like-minded people, and this program ought to facilitate that. I've attended PROMYS (a summer mathematics program) for 3 years so far, and each time was the best 6 weeks of my life. The fun arose from a combination of extremely challenging math and communication with other people who were working on it. This program sounds like a similar experience, so I expect to enjoy myself. I'm also going to the Clay Research Academy in a few weeks, which should be fun as well.