Lycée Students Take On Regional MathCounts Competition

And Rise to the Challenge

Recently, six of our IB students — Maximilien, Camille, Eliot, Ella, Varvara, and Dasha — competed in the regional MathCounts chapter competition, marking an exciting milestone for the Lycée's growing International track.

For many of them, this was their first experience in a high-stakes academic competition. That alone is worth celebrating. Stepping into an unfamiliar, challenging environment and choosing to compete takes exactly the kind of courage and curiosity we cultivate every day at the Lycée.

While our students won't be advancing to the national round this year, they represented our school with distinction — and that is only the beginning.

Math Beyond the Classroom

Competitions like MathCounts bring mathematics to life in ways that no classroom exercise can fully replicate. They ask students to think under pressure, reason independently, and apply what they know to problems they have never seen before. In doing so, they embody many of the IB Learner Profile attributes at the heart of our program: thinker, inquirer, communicator, risk-taker, and more.

This is precisely why academic competitions fit so naturally within the IB framework — they bridge the gap between classroom learning and real-world problem-solving, and they show students what they are truly capable of when the stakes are real.

A Growing Program With Bigger Ambitions

This year's MathCounts team is just one sign of the momentum building within the Lycée's IB program. Looking ahead, we hope to offer even more opportunities for students to compete — and we are particularly excited about the prospect of French and IB track students joining forces in future competitions. That kind of cross-track collaboration reflects something central to who we are: a school where two rigorous academic traditions strengthen each other, and where students from both pathways grow together.