Three Distinctions in Year 8: Rhea's AMC, Kangourou and Olympiad Year

For her first years at Cuemath, Rhea loved using the Cueboard, an interactive collaborative whiteboard with built-in math tools, to draw intricate rangolis using repeating patterns. What might have looked like a playful distraction was actually early spatial and structural reasoning at work. Recognizing her creative drive, her Cuemath tutor, Narjis Fatima, integrated pattern-making into the lessons rather than pushing traditional, repetitive drills. Narjis has taught her since 2021, through weekly online math tutoring.

AMC, Kangourou and APSMO Reward Reasoning Over Memorization

That approach paid off in the three papers Rhea sat in 2025. The Australian Mathematics Competition, run by the Australian Maths Trust alongside Kangourou des Mathématiques and the APSMO Maths Olympiads, is not a standard syllabus-based school test. All three reward creative reasoning, logical flexibility, and the agility to navigate unfamiliar problems, rather than memorization or speed.

Rhea Finished in the Top Tier of All Three

Rhea took all three competitions in the same year and earned top-tier finishes in each. On the AMC, a Distinction placed her in the top 20% of participants, while her Kangourou des Mathématiques Distinction ranked her in the top 15% nationally. She capped off the sweep in the APSMO Maths Olympiad, earning both the Top 25% and Top 10% Achiever pins.

Rhea's 2025 results

Tap any certificate to open it full size.

Her Tutor Made Practice Count, Not Repeat

Because Rhea already managed a full schedule of extracurricular activities, her study time needed to be highly effective. Instead of working through routine sums, she focused on targeted learning sheets designed to stretch her problem-solving abilities. Whenever a school topic like algebra, geometry or data handling arose, Narjis cleared Rhea's doubts first before introducing deeper challenge problems on the same concepts. Over time, Rhea blended her natural love for exploration with rigorous mathematical thinking.

Narjis Fatima
Cuemath Tutor

"She has been a bright student since she joined, and she has grown into a dedicated one. Earlier she was very playful, and wanted to spend most of the class on the cueboard, making rangolis with patterns. She wanted to enjoy the class more than learn from it.

Her interest built slowly, while she solved math problems on the learning sheets. She had extracurricular activities for other subjects at school, so she wanted less routine practice and more of the extra practice sheets.

I also help her prepare for her school tests, in topics such as algebra, geometry and data handling, by clearing her doubts first and then assigning extra practice sheets."

That Pattern Instinct Is What Being MathFit Means

The rangolis have not gone anywhere. What has changed is where the pattern-finding goes to work now: into a problem Rhea has never seen before, on a paper with no syllabus behind it. That is what being MathFit looks like, the instinct to find the structure in a problem before reaching for a method, and the confidence that comes from having done it many times before.

Rhea is in Year 9 now, and the papers only get harder from here. She is not the only Cuemath student building a run like this, another student swept a season of math contests. What they have in common is not a knack for tests. It is years of practice shaped around the way each of them already liked to think.