By Sarah Novicoff

Some 112 students elected to take the American Mathematics Competition Feb. 22 in Rugby Auditorium. The test technically does not require any math knowledge above algebra so all students were welcome to take the test, although it did require students to miss their first and second period classes.

The AMC consists of five contests, but only the AMC 10, for sophomores, and the AMC 12, for juniors and seniors, were offered at the upper school.

“The purpose of the contest is to give Harvard-Westlake students a chance to exercise their brains,” according to math teacher and official administrator of the contest at the upper school, Kevin Weis. “It requires strong reasoning skills and creative problem solving. It gives our students a chance to perhaps see another side of mathematics.”

Students who score highly on the tests will then qualify to take the next level of testing, the AIME, administered in March, and students who do well on the AIME proceed to take the OSAMO.

Doing well on the OSAMO results in an invitation to a math summer camp, and eventually the highest-scoring students will try out for a spot on the International Mathematics Olympiad team.