Impact Stories

Grade 3 Math Competition Wins: Kushagra's Standout Year with Cuemath

Cuemath

14 Apr 2026 — 4 min read

When Kushagra's mother enrolled her five-year-old in online math classes, she was not sure it would work. Starting a child in structured lessons that early, and online, was a real leap of faith.

By Grade 3, that early start had paid off in a big way. Kushagra put together a standout year across math competitions: first place at the North South Foundation (NSF) Math Bee regional, first place individually at the Math Perennial Jacksonville contest, and 24th in the state at Math Kangaroo 2026, alongside the President's Award for Educational Excellence and his school's Honor Roll. Guiding him the whole way, from India to the US, has been the same Cuemath tutor, Kumkum Sureka, through weekly online math tutoring.

Meet Kushagra

Grade: 3 (now entering Grade 4)
Country: US
Tutor: Kumkum Sureka
With Cuemath Since: Age 5 (started in India)
Competition wins (2025-26): NSF Math Bee 1st (regional); Math Perennial Jacksonville 1st individual, 2nd team; Math Perennial Nationals 7th; Math Showers 2nd & 3rd; Math Kangaroo 2026, 24th in state
School honors: President's Award for Educational Excellence, Honor Roll (2025-26)

Every parent who starts a child young wonders whether it is too soon. For Kushagra's family, the question was specific. He was only five, and working through a math problem independently was still a long way off, as it is for any child that age. What his mother hoped for most was that he would learn to read a problem and reason through it himself, without someone guiding him to every answer.

"As a teacher, it is always both an opportunity and a challenge to provide meaningful feedback that highlights a student’s core strengths and areas for improvement. I would like to share my observations about my student, Kushagra, who joined Cuemath at a very young age of five. From then until now , I have consistently noticed and appreciated his remarkable growth in mathematics. Over the past four years, he has shown steady and meaningful development—progressing from building foundational skills to demonstrating strong confidence and independence in his learning. Each year, he has displayed noticeable improvement in his mathematical understanding, active participation in competitions, and overall academic consistency. Now he is more responsible, focused, and collaborative, and his dedication to learning continues to stand out. There are lot of beautiful moments with him like discussion on any question where he put his strategy more confidently than mine , these discussions proves his positive mindset and love for Math. I really look forward to guide him to be more confident and promising career of Kushagra with strong mathematical skills in future with Cuemath. With this i want to wish him best wishes and happy Maths learning always ."

~ KUMKUM SUREKA, CUEMATH TUTOR

Kumkum Sureka changed that, not by drilling him but by encouraging him. She gave him room to try, nudged him with a question instead of handing over the answer, and let him do the thinking. Over hundreds of sessions, something clicked. Kushagra began reading problems on his own and working them out himself, the independent thinking his mother had hoped for taking hold. In time, their sessions turned into real discussions, where he would lay out his own approach to a problem, sometimes with more conviction than his tutor, a sign of how fully he had come to trust his own thinking.

Then the family moved from India to the US. A new country, a new curriculum, a new school, the kind of disruption that often sets a child's math back. It did not set Kushagra back, because Cuemath kept Kumkum as his tutor through the move. She already knew how he thought, so nothing had to be rebuilt, and he carried his foundation straight into the new system.

"Hi Team, I felt happy while writing and sharing my thoughts and experience gained so far from cuemath. It's a second year for us with cuemath, I decided my son Kushagra to enroll in cuemth when he was in UKG it was challenging at that time to make him understand to learn online but we were determined to start early with cuemath so that foundation would be strong. After initial hiccups and settlement we got a supportive and encouraging teacher Mrs. Kumkum Sureka maam. As a mother I always worried how he will understand, read the questions but Kumkum maam encouragement and guidance helps Kushagra to read and understand problems independently. We started our cuemath journey in India and we moved to another country, different challenges in curriculum but cuemath team made this transition smooth for us and aligned same teacher with Kushagra. His confidence and interest in math is better and his academic state level assessment results made us proud parents. A very special thanks to Kumkum maam without her support , guidance and showing confidence in Kushagra it wouldn't be possible. I wish cuemath team support will be there with us in up coming years too. Thanks, Kushagra Parents"

~ KUSHAGRA'S PARENT

By Grade 3, that foundation was showing up everywhere. Beyond his first-place finishes, he placed second with his team at Math Perennial Jacksonville, took 7th at the Math Perennial Nationals, and added 2nd- and 3rd-place finishes in Math Showers. Math Kangaroo, where he ranked 24th in the state, is an international competition that rewards reasoning and creative problem-solving over memorized procedures, exactly the kind of thinking he had been building for years. He is not the only young Cuemath student to shine at it, another Grade 3 student placed near the top of the state in Math Kangaroo.

The five-year-old whose mother once wondered if online lessons would work now meets a hard problem head-on, reading it, thinking it through, and trusting himself to find the way. That way of thinking, built patiently from his earliest years with Cuemath, is what being MathFit looks like in a young student, real understanding paired with the confidence to reason through anything. Foundations like his are easiest to build early, long before the math ever gets hard.