Bucknell students have had some terrific performances in recent years. Last year, Bucknell ranked 68 out of 487 schools, and third in the Mathematical Association of America section that covers Eastern Pennsylvania and Delaware (EPaDel) behind Penn and Haverford. Skyler Le (’27, Mathematics major) had a score of 32, with a rank of 369 out of 4329 participants.
In preparation for this year’s event, taking place on Saturday, December 5th, there are also student-led practice sessions every Tuesday in the Olin Math Lounge, led by Meshkat Alam (’28, Physics and Mathematics major).
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Want to try a problem of your own? Here’s an example to think about.
A grasshopper starts at the origin in the coordinate plane and makes a sequence of hops. Each hop has length 5, and after each hop the grasshopper is at a point whose coordinates are both integers; thus, there are 12 possible locations for the grasshopper after the first hop. What is the smallest number of hops needed for the grasshopper to reach the point (2021, 2021)?
Our department has a strong record of past performance. Shout out to past Mathematics and Statistics Department Competitions Committee chairs for keeping track of the history.
Last year (academic year 2025-2026) we had 12 participants. The Putnam for the academic year 2024-2025 was notoriously difficult. The median score was 2, with the average score at 8 (out of 120). We had 5 students participate. Skyler Le still went on to earn a score of 22 and was ranked among the top 500 participants out of approximately 4,000. In the academic year 2023-2024 we had 8 students participate. Skyler (42 pts) and Anh Tran ’24 (41 pts) were both ranked between 101 and 200 out of the 3,857 total students who took the exam. Bucknell’s team placed 3rd in the EPaDel MAA section. All of the students scored points, and 6 of the 8 students had scores in the double digits.
Above is the Academic Year 2022-23 Putnam Participants: Back row (left to right): Changkun Guan ’24, Yang Hong ’23, Jonathan Seitz ’26, Kerong Wang ’24, MinhPhuong Cao ’26. Front row: Mikey Ferguson ’25, Vy Tran ’25, Cole Kratz ’26, Michael Perez Palapa ’23, Susan Deering ’26, Anh Tran ’24. Missing from photo: Clara Chaplin ’25, Jiasong Zhu ’24.
Above is the Academic Year 2021-22 Putnam Participants: Back row (left to right): Alejandro Vargas-Altamirano ’25, Michael Perez Palapa ’23, Anh Tran ’24, Eric Jaeger ’25, Danny Nolan ’25, Changkun Guan ’24. Middle row: Yang Hong ’23, Nghia Le ’24, Lily Fauntleroy ’23, Erin Fitch ’25, Clara Chaplin ’25. Front row: Mikey Ferguson ’25, Anh Kieu ’22, Tianzhu (Peter) Liu ’22, Clare Bassano ’23, Swarup Dhar ’22. Missing from photo: Peter Warhold ’23
Students who like challenging math problems are encouraged to participate. No advanced mathematical knowledge is required; creative problem-solving is the goal. Participation is free and on-campus. Students who are interested should contact Prof. Langford for more details!
Are you an alum who participated in the Putnam? We’d love to hear about what that experience was like for you, so reach out on LinkedIn! Want a chance to be featured in a future blog post? Respond to our question of the week here, and your answer may be chosen for a future post.
