CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — Alex Zhai. Math genius. These words are easily interchangeable given the tremendous success that the 2008 Uni alum enjoyed in national and international math competitions.

Of course, the pinnacle of his success came in the summer of 2008, when he earned a perfect score and tied for first in the world at the International Mathematical Olympiad.

Alex Zhai trains last summer at the University of Nebraska in preparation for the 49th International Math Olympiad, held in July in Madrid, Spain. Photo by Mathematical Association of America (click to enlarge)

Surprisingly, Zhai's response to his performance at his third and final IMO was that of nonchalance.

"I didn't really have a reaction," says Zhai, now a freshman at Harvard. "Maybe if the format of the competition were different, I would have been more excited, but after taking the test, I knew that I had solved all the problems. We had several days to wait for results and the ceremony, so there wasn't really an element of surprise."

Since his sophomore year, when he first participated in the IMO, the excitement generated by the world's biggest math competition has waned.

"The first time at IMO, it was a new experience, and it might have changed how I thought about math, but this time I pretty much knew what to expect," he says.

But geniuses are made, not born. Zhai’s success in math was not spontaneously generated, but rather the result of a progression of contests with increasing difficulty.

Starting out small

Zhai admits to not being very interested in math as a child. He saw himself as a more science and engineering kind of person. He enjoyed playing with LEGO blocks more than anything else.

His first introduction to the world of competitive math was in sixth grade with the MathCounts program at Winchester Thurston Middle School in Pittsburgh, Pa. MathCounts was a very important thing to the community, and Zhai's teacher encouraged him to participate. The excitement generated by MathCounts and the importance it held in his school gave Zhai the motivation to succeed and improve his mathematical ability.

And he discovered he was pretty good at this thing called math.

He won the Pittsburgh chapter and finished 10th in the state of Pennsylvania.

"I hadn't really been expecting [to win the Pittsburgh chapter]," says Zhai. "Once I won I realized I could actually do pretty well. I realized that I could make the nationals."

Welcome to Champaign

Following his success in Pittsburgh, Zhai moved to Champaign and attended Franklin Middle School for seventh grade. To his dismay, MathCounts wasn't as big a deal in Champaign as it was in Pittsburgh, possibly because competition from the Chicago area deters students from smaller towns from doing well.

Nevertheless, Zhai was still determined to advance to nationals.

"In seventh grade I was basically motivated on my own," he recalls. "I did all these practice tests because I really wanted to go to nationals and do well at nationals."

This was the first time he was able to motivate himself enough to devote the time and energy required to do well in competitive math.

"Before I would just do whatever seemed fun, which was sometimes math. Then I started doing practice tests, and I was able to see how I improved."

His incredible self-motivation would eventually pay off as Zhai advanced to nationals that year. However, nerves got the better of him on the day of the competition and he "messed up on the test day."

A national title and the beginning of a new journey

Zhai's lackluster performance at nationals that year was hardly a disappointment to him. Instead, he describes it as having helped him become aware of things besides MathCounts.

"MathCounts at that point for me was mostly about speed since by then I had studied enough that I knew all of the material. Then I realized that the next step for me was doing harder contests rather than just getting faster at MathCounts."

Following his performance at nationals, Zhai came to Uni for his subfreshman and high school years. At this point, MathCounts had taken a back seat to a more challenging goal, the American Invitational Mathematics Exam. Students can qualify for this exam by receiving at least a score of 100 out of a possible 150 on the American Mathematics Contest.

However, he still did very well at MathCounts, once again advancing to nationals, this time as part of an Illinois team that would win the 2004 national title. Zhai himself placed fifth in the written round and appeared on ESPN with the rest of the national finalists. He also visited the White House with his Illinois teammates to receive congratulations from George W. Bush.

Despite his continuing success in MathCounts, qualifying to take the AIME became his ultimate goal as a subfreshman. At this time, his parents had contact with other children who were gifted in mathematics and Zhai learned that some of them were doing well on the AIME and getting invited to the United States of America Mathematical Olympiad.

"That's what motivated me to get into [the AIME]," says Zhai. "So then I spent a lot of time working on those problems, and those were actually pretty challenging to me."

That year, Zhai took the AMC and reached his goal of taking the AIME and advancing to the USAMO.

The third step and beyond

Looking back at his math contest career, Zhai sees his goal of competing in the national MathCounts competition as his first step, the AIME as the second, and finally his goal of competing in the International Math Olympiad as the third.

The road to the IMO provided him with the challenges that he desired. Unlike other contest problems that he had done before, the IMO had problems involving mathematical proofs.

"They add a whole new element there in that you have to explain your answers," he says. "For that part it was hard for me to train on my own because I didn't really have anyone to guide me on that, and I felt kind of lost as to how to do these things."

Despite this adversity, Zhai still did well enough as a freshman on the USAMO to be one of the top 12 scorers and advance to the prestigious summer training camp at the University of Nebraska where the six members of the U.S. IMO team are chosen and the most promising young math students in the country are groomed for the highest levels of competition.

Zhai was finally able to advance to the IMO as a sophomore and again his junior year and yet again his senior year.

As a sophomore, he was one of 89 students in the world to win a silver medal, and as a junior, he earned a gold medal and placed in the top 10 individually, finishing seventh. Both years the U.S. team placed fifth.

However, his senior year performance would dwarf all of his previous efforts. In July 2008, competing in Madrid, Spain, less than two months removed from his Uni graduation, Zhai distinguished himself as best in the world, tying two students from the People's Republic China for first with a perfect score in the IMO.

But for Zhai, it didn't end there.

"Since my senior year at Uni, I haven't had that many concrete goals," he says, "but right now I'm just trying to learn all the things that I've been interested in.”

Now, he sees himself as starting to move past the Olympiad problems, and he studies math both on his own and as a math major at Harvard.

Thus, with a series of contests starting with MathCounts, a little boy who loved LEGOs was inspired to become one of the top young mathematicians in the world.

"I didn't used to be that interested in math. The contest series sort of got me into studying advanced math. Math is a big thing for me, but I don't know what I'm going to do with my life overall yet."

Looking back

Currently, Zhai is enjoying the many interesting people he has met at Harvard. Even among some of America's most distinguished students, Zhai manages to stand out.

"Especially at Harvard, there are lots of people who have done impressive things." says Zhai. "When I meet people, my IMO participation might be sort of a big thing at first, but conversations quickly move on to other levels that we can connect on."

In continuing his mathematical education, Zhai took Math 55a: Honors Abstract Algebra during his first semester and is looking to continue this semester with Math 55b and another math course on which he has not decided.

Beyond that, his future is far from certain, at least in his own eyes.

"I can't give a good answer about where I see myself beyond Harvard at the moment," he says. "I'm a bit conflicted about what I want to do, but hopefully I'll be able to get a better idea in college."

As for his past, Zhai is thankful for the excellent education he received at Uni.

"One thing that I've noticed is that people are right when they say Uni prepares you for college. I was surprised to see that many intro Harvard courses are just somewhat harder versions of Uni courses."

Zhai has met many people who took heavy loads of AP and honors courses in high school. Coming from Uni, which offers no AP courses and has a student body totaling 300 people, Zhai was startled by the different high school subcultures he was exposed to.

"Some [students] learned a lot of material but maybe haven't been exposed to as many ideas outside of the standard curriculum. That said, Uni was very small, so looking back I think it was also somewhat limiting. It's been quite an experience to have so many more classmates and so many more classes to choose from in college."

But whatever Uni's limitations, Zhai believes his high school years stack up well with those of his new classmates.

"Based on getting to know other people here," he says, "it seems like my overall high school experience was much more pleasant than most people's."

Alex Zhai (front row, nearest to camera), shown here at the 2008 Math Olympiad Summer Program at the University of Nebraska at Lincoln, tied for first in the world at the 49th International Mathematical Olympiad, held in July in Madrid, Spain. Photo by Mathematical Association of America (click to enlarge)