For the fourth straight year, Gainesville's Buchholz High School will be sending students to an elite national math competition.
Senior Harish Vemuri, sophomore Daniel Zeng and freshman Jeffrey Lu are set to head to the 46th annual USA Mathematical Olympiad on April 19 and 20, according to a news release from Alachua County Public Schools. The three are among the top 500 math students in the nation and the top 15 in Florida.
The three earned spots in the competition by receiving top scores on its qualifying exams, which is taken by tens of thousands of students.
Buchholz math coach Will Frazer said he is happy for his students.
“This is very exciting,” he said in the news release. “There are very few schools that qualify even one student, let alone multiple students.”
The USA Mathematical Olympiad is a difficult nine-hour exam that and takes place over the two days of the competition.
Based on the results from the test, six students will be chosen to represent the United States next summer in Romania at the 2018 International Mathematical Olympiad.
This Olympiad will be Vemuri's third. He's a senior, so he's disqualified from going to the international competition in 2018. But he still has his sights set on winning.
“It’s really hard to do," he said in the release, "but I’m going to take the test and see if I can solve some problems on it.”
The other two students are excited for the challenge, as well.
“The problems they give are really nice, and it feels good when you solve them,” Lu said.
“It’s fun,” Zeng said.