Joon Lee

I am currently a first year student at Carnegie Mellon studying Mathematical Sciences. I chose this path because I have always been interested in mathematics and the structure behind every idea in the subject. Especially when I dove deeper into rigorous mathematics in high school, the formation of such beautiful ideas, theorems, and structures from just the basic axioms was very intriguing to me. There was something so beautiful about building from the fundamentals with proofs: even though it seemed rigid and left no room for innovation, the path taken to prove a statement contained its own beauty. Besides mathematics, I also have an interest in computer science, something I want to explore more at Carnegie Mellon.

I studied at Random Math from 9th through 12th grade, attending regular classes, Accelerator classes, and the Together program when it was introduced. I have qualified for the AIME 3 times and achieved an Honor Roll on the AMC 12. I have also participated in college tournaments such as the Berkeley Math Tournament, Stanford Math Tournament, Harvard-MIT Math Tournament, and the Carnegie Mellon Informatics and Mathematics Competition, and at the 2026 Stanford Math Tournament, I achieved 5th place on the Algebra Test and 1st place on the Calculus Test. I have also won the Integration Bee at various competitions 4 times.

However, these tournaments were more than just a competition for top scores. At every tournament, individual or team-based, I had many fun moments with my peers, including many from Random Math, and built friendships that went beyond mathematics. I also was a TA at Random Math, where I learned how to work with younger students and how to work through problems in different ways. This helped me develop a strong sense of patience, something especially helpful when working on difficult problems for the Putnam Exam, which I hope to try as an undergraduate.

Random Math has given me many valuable experiences and helped me develop a strong sense of problem solving and critical thinking that I use in all my classes at Carnegie Mellon.