The first New Mexico Math Meet (NM3) took place from 9:00 AM to 2:00 PM on Saturday, September 20th, 2025 at the Science and Math Learning Center (SMLC) on the UNM campus. Over 90 middle school students from Albuquerque, Rio Rancho, and Las Cruces participated, making up about 30 teams, each with 1 to 4 members. During competition rounds, a pizza lunch, an awards ceremony, and a parting raffle of prizes, the SMLC building was abuzz with youthful energy; see Photo 1.
Photo 1. Participants at the opening of NM3
NM3 is a new in-person team-based math competition for New Mexico middle school students of all levels. Organized and helmed by New Mexico high school students, NM3 fosters a positive environment for young math enthusiasts. The inaugural competition had three rounds: Bingo, Guts, and Countdown. Each unique, but all team-based, the rounds rewarded ingenuity, collaboration, and critical thinking. Every round was designed to be fun! Both Guts and Bingo consisted of 25 problems, with Guts including themed problems, Fermi problems, and logic puzzles. Guts also featured a live leaderboard tracking each team’s ranking. In the final Countdown round the top eight teams competed in an elimination style tournament. NM3 was organized by the New Mexico Math Team (NMMT), a group of high school students who themselves prepare for and compete in various math competitions. Collectively, NMMT members have qualified for the American Invitational Mathematics Examination (AIME) and MATH-COUNTS Nationals. They have been top-place winners of the UNM-PNM Statewide High School Math Contest! The NM3 director is Sean Choi1 a senior attending Stanford Online High School. The other staff members are Ada Dyer, a home-schooled sophomore also enrolled at CNM; Grace Hsieh, Aiden Kim, and Alicia Peng, all juniors at La Cueva High School; Laszlo Zolyomi, a senior at Davidson Academy Online; and Daniel Choi, a freshman at Bosque School. See Photo 2.
Photo 2. Organizers for the inaugural NM3
Sean had been dreaming about a team-based math competition in NM for over a year, and started working seriously on the project after encouragement from Po-Shen Loh, a mathematics professor at Carnegie Mellon University who for nine years coached the U.S. International Mathematical Olympiad (IMO) team. Professor Loh visited UNM in February 2025, in part to deliver the Public Lecture for the 2024-2025 UNM-PNM Contest. Sean partnered with UNM’s Department of Mathematics and Statistics, and he secured outside sponsors (The Daily Challenge, Jane Street, Art of Problem Solving, American Mathematical Society, and Hudson River Trading). He built the webpage and spent last Spring researching and pre-planning the rounds. Sean formed his team last summer. The team further developed the rounds and planned the event. The team members were in charge of all logistics, including the contest-day program, problem creation, outreach, and real-time grading. Quite a feat! Witnessing NM3 firsthand, associate professor Stephen Lau, co-director of the UNM-PNM Math Contest, had these words for Sean Choi and the organizers: “NM3 was truly a magical event! I’m just so impressed with the way you and the other high-school students were able to plan such a complex event, and then pull it off flawlessly and with flair ... From grading UNM-PNM over the past few years, I already recognized all of the high-school organizers as a pantheon of mathematical talent. The know-how that went into NM3 evidenced rather different skills, but, to my mind, equally striking ones.”
Taking stock after the event, Sean stated: “Thank you all for your help and encouragement! The New Mexico Math Meet today was a big success with around 90 students who participated. We were able to smoothly run 3 rounds, distribute lunch, grade every round, and hold an awards ceremony without major issues! We somehow even ended earlier than expected!” In further reflection, he added: “The most meaningful part of the contest was probably the contest day itself. Each person on the organizing team massively stepped up and together we were able to ensure that everything ran smoothly. And seeing the middle schoolers wrestling with our problems with their friends was quite an experience. I think that the team format was an extremely good idea, as we could see each team working together and bouncing ideas off of each other. Everyone seemed excited about tackling the problems, which felt great! In the end, there was overwhelming feedback that the team format made the competition fun and enjoyable, and I heard that many students met new friends that day. All in all, it was a very eye-opening experience for us as well, and we’ll see how this competition pans out next year :)”
More information about the New Mexico Math Team and NM3 is available from the NMMT webpage: https://contest.nmmathteam.com
1For a second year Sean is also serving as Coach for the UNM-PNM Statewide High School Math Contest, after having twice been the Contest’s overall winner. He leads both preparation and solution sessions throughout the year.
[This news article as a pdf.]
