competitions & hackathons

i've done a lot of competitions. here's an honest account of every one — what it was, how I did, and what I actually learned.

hackathons (3.5 wins out of 5)

hackathons are where I learn fastest. you compress months of learning into 24-48 hours, and you come out with something real. the communities you find through competitions are often where lasting relationships start.

TRAE Solo Hackathon (Oct 2025)

result: 1st place out of 29 ($1500)
where: a tech company's office
what I learned: solo hackathons force you to scope ruthlessly. no teammate to split work with means every feature choice matters.

AGI House Agent Skills Build Day (Mar 14, 2026)

result: won
team: built a Claude skill with two teammates. also launched referral.bike at the same event.
what I learned: the best hackathon teams have complementary skills, not overlapping ones.

EventConnect at an AI company's hackathon event

result: won audience vote
team: built with a friend
what I learned: audience votes reward demos that feel magical. polish the demo.

MongoDB Agentic Memory & Context Engineering Hackathon (Oct 11, 2025)

result: top 6 out of 70
where: SF
what I learned: "top 6 out of 70" feels like almost-winning, which is its own kind of useful. close losses sharpen you.

Gemini Multimodal Hackathon (Oct 18-19, 2025)

result: produced OnCue demo
what I learned: multimodal demos are hard to scope. the "wow" moment needs to be in the first 30 seconds.

organizing: Startup Pitch Hackathon (May 9, 2026)

co-organizing this. 5k/2.5k/$1.25k prizes. being on the other side of hackathons teaches you what judges actually look for.

upcoming: SF Hackathon (Apr 25, 2026)

hackathon advice (earned from actually winning)

the demo is everything. judges spend 2-5 minutes with your project. if you can't show something impressive in that time, nothing else matters.
scope aggressively. the #1 mistake is building too much. pick one impressive thing and polish it.
the 70/30 rule: spend 70% of your time on the core feature and 30% on the demo/presentation. most teams invert this.
pick the right prize track. "best use of [sponsor API]" categories are usually less competitive than "best overall." using a sponsor's API well is often a free win.
tell a story. judges remember the team that had a compelling "why" more than the team with the most features.
ship it. having a live URL or working app beats a slide deck every time.

math competitions

math competitions teach you to think precisely under pressure. the skills transfer to everything.

AMC 10

scores: 91.5/73.5 (2024), 88.5/97.5 (2023)
honest take: the canonical pipeline. I did it, it was useful for building mathematical maturity, but I didn't make AIME and that's fine. the AMC grind has diminishing returns if you're not naturally headed toward USAMO.

HiMCM (Nov 2025)

team: three teammates
what we did: fire/evacuation scenario, Monte Carlo simulation
honest take: massively underrated competition. see math-modeling for the full breakdown. this is the closest to actual applied math/engineering work. 36 hours, real-world problem, build a model. I love math modeling competitions more than contest math.

COMAP MCM/ICM

result: Meritorious (top 10%)
what we did: spectral bisection, cellular automata, graph traversal
honest take: harder and more prestigious than HiMCM. competing as high schoolers against college teams and placing top 10% was a genuine accomplishment.

M3 Challenge

result: 143/770 (top 19.8%), qualified for second round
honest take: 14-hour math modeling challenge, free to enter. good entry point into modeling competitions. we qualified for the second round which felt great.

MTFC

result: semifinalist (2025-26)
what we did: equitable bus routing
honest take: the problem was genuinely interesting. applied math with social impact.

IMMC 2026 (Mar 18-23)

international math modeling. similar flavor to HiMCM/MCM but with an international pool.

BmMT

result: 2nd best puzzle round score (2023)

SMT (a university math tournament)

result: honorable mention individual + team

NMT (my school's math tournament)

I co-lead this. organizing a math tournament teaches you logistics, problem-writing, and community-building all at once.

physics competitions

USAYPT (Jan 2026)

result: 2nd nationally. the format (physics meets debate) also develops public speaking skills
team: 11 members
honest take: unique format — physics meets debate. you present research, other teams poke holes in it. teaches you to defend ideas rigorously. placing 2nd nationally with this team was one of my proudest moments.

F=ma Exam (2026)

the qualifier for USAPhO. took it.

science & research competitions

BL4S / CERN BeamLine for Schools (submitted Mar 2026)

team: four members
what: proton beam shielding simulation
honest take: writing a proposal for actual CERN beam time forces you to think like a real physicist. even if we don't get selected, the proposal-writing process was incredibly valuable.

Davidson Fellows (submitted Feb 2026)

what: submitted my paper on anesthetics/EEG
honest take: this rewards depth. you need to have done something genuinely significant. I submitted my EEG research.

Golden Gate STEM Fair (early Mar 2026)

regional science fair.

Breakthrough Junior Challenge

result: top 40%
what I did: RL intuition video
honest take: this is a video competition, not a research competition. production quality matters as much as scientific accuracy. top 40% isn't a win, but making the video taught me about science communication.

Congressional App Challenge

what I submitted: Pause app
result: congressional certification
honest take: relatively low bar compared to other competitions, but the certification from your congressperson is a nice touch.

other competitions I've done

BIG Idea Competition: Honorable Mention
Scholastic Writing Awards: submitted Dec 2025
NACLO: open round (computational linguistics — surprisingly fun)
PicoCTF 2024: cybersecurity CTF. good for learning security basics.
Wharton Data Science: participated
Fed Challenge (NY Fed): did this with a teammate. made a corn podcast. yes, a corn podcast.
Ethics Bowl: went 2-1

chess

won USATW U1000 6-0, placed at SF Scholastic, won at a local tournament, bughouse 8-0. chess is the thing I do for fun that happens to also be competitive.

the meta

competitions are tools, not goals. I did a lot of them — probably too many. the ones that taught me the most were the ones where I was genuinely interested in the problem (math modeling, USAYPT, hackathons), not the ones where I was chasing a result.

if you're going to compete, go deep in one or two areas rather than shallow in five. see learning-paths for why interest-driven learning beats credential-driven learning. I went too wide sometimes. a national-level result in one thing is worth more than mediocre participation in everything.