Three Binghamton University students managed to receive nonzero scores at the William Lowell Putnam Mathematical Competition, one of the United States and Canada’s preeminent math exams.

Almost a fourth of all students who have competed in this year’s competition received a zero, but BU had three on its team who scored six or higher. Ashton Keith, president of the Math Club and junior majoring in mathematics, received an honorable mention — given to participants who scored a 45 out of 120 total points — Levi Axelrod, a junior majoring in mathematics, answered two questions correctly and Eric Wang, an undeclared freshman, answered one question correctly. Overall, BU’s team ranked 54 out of the 427 participating schools.

The competition is held for undergraduate students on the first Saturday in December. The test includes 12 questions, and students are given six hours to solve them. Cash prizes are awarded to the top five teams and top five students. However, Axelrod said that due to the test’s difficulty, it was a feat to even answer one question correctly.

Keith has participated in the competition for three years in a row and has also competed in other math and chess competitions since high school. He said while the subject matter or formatting was familiar, it was still challenging.

“During the exam, it’s usually a mix of panic, frustration, fog and serotonin going through my head,” Keith wrote in an email. “It’s a proof-based competition, so the hard part is getting any answer at all.”

The William Lowell Putnam Mathematical Competition tests are different each year, requiring students to hold a range of theoretical knowledge, from linear algebra to number theory, according to the exam’s webpage. In addition, many of the questions are self-contained or proof-based, and students are not allowed calculators.

According to Axelrod, who also competed last year, the difficulty is what makes the exam enjoyable, and despite the challenge, staying focused and on task was his main priority.

“I like the way that the solutions to puzzles can click into place when you think through them logically,” Axelrod wrote in an email. “I started off by reading through each of the problems and made a quick evaluation of which one would be worth my time to start working on first. I then stared at that one for a while until I had an idea of how to go about solving it, then did a bit of scratch work calculation, then started writing out a justification. Rinse and repeat.”

According to Xingye Qiao, associate professor of mathematics, BU does not offer formal training for the exam, and it is mostly up to the students to find time to practice and study. The department does provide “Problem of the Week,” a series started by Marcin Mazur, chair and professor in the department of mathematics, which holds questions similar to that of the William Lowell Putnam Mathematical Competition. Alexander Borisov, an associate professor of mathematics, also holds an informal group meeting weekly to discuss problem-solving techniques, a service which Wang said he used several times as competition time approached.

“The students self-select themselves to the competition,” Qiao wrote in an email. “All we do is to provide them with the information and a place to meet with other students who are equally talented and interested. We try to build a community of talented students and a culture of challenging hard problems.”

According to Keith, students had to use more than just their math knowledge to answer some of the questions. Keith said good reading comprehension and context-clue-finding were also important skills to have on the exam and increased the chances of answering correctly.

“Solving a problem makes you feel clever, and there is a lot of intuitive aesthetics behind a simple solution to a problem using tools that weren’t built for it,” Keith said. “The [William Lowell Putnam Mathematical Competition] tries to pick out these sorts of problems.”