HMMT February 2026

From February 13-17th, I attended the 2026 Harvard-MIT Mathematics Tournament (HMMT). I was part of the Korean team organized by KGSEA, and had a great experience during the five days on MIT campus.

Day 1 (KST) – The Flight

I arrived at Incheon International Airport and joined my teammates. It was 6:00 a.m., and I was one of the first to arrive. I had barely slept the night before in an attempt to fall asleep on the plane. As 22 other participants arrived, I found out that most of us had little to no sleep the night before!

Our team’s director, Mr. Patrick, stayed behind to wait for two students who were yet to arrive. The rest of us gathered at luggage control, and we were delirious from both sleep deprivation and excitement. Our team was led by 3 other coaches, and one of them, Mr. Jang, stood just in front of me in line. We passed the boring minutes at the queue talking about weather in Boston, the ugliness of MIT’s campus, and my background in moving to international education.

After the busy luggage inspection, all that awaited us was the flight. We were divided into three teams, and I met up with my Team A members of 8 students at the gate. Three of them and I wandered the terminal in search of an empty food court seat. Despite being early in the morning, we could not find a single available seat.

And with that, we waited for boarding, then for liftoff. The 13-hour flight has begun.

Day 1 (EST) – Friday, A Busy Day of Prep

I tried to fall asleep on the airplane, almost frantically. I sat still with my eyes closed for 12 hours straight – and failed to get a minute of sleep. But I set the drowsiness aside as we prepared for landing, and something more powerful than lack of sleep kicked in. Maybe that was excitement for what lies ahead. Maybe a sudden realization, that I was 12,000km away from home.

Whatever that was, I became more alert than ever after landing. I waited in the long queue for U.S. border protection. I met up with two different team members, one of whom was actually from Palo Alto. At passport control, I got through with a breeze, but the teammate behind me had quite an ordeal. It actually took more than 30 minutes for all of us to enter the U.S. I enjoyed the waiting, though, because I had the chance to talk with other teammates who got out first.

We spent another 30 minutes travelling to our hotel by Uber. We would spend the day in the hotel, preparing for the team rounds that will take place tomorrow. What followed was another round of waiting, as we took more than an hour to check in.

As we were waiting around the lobby, I wandered off to a café area of the hotel. Luckily, I met a very friendly guy from Ohio who would also be competing in HMMT tomorrow. He was very curious about how math competitions went in Korea, and we spent some time getting to know each other.

At last, we moved in to our respective rooms. Two people shared a room, and my roommate also happened to be on the same Team A. This was his fourth year coming to HMMT, and it was great to have him as my roommate. Unsurprisingly, he was the leader of Team A.

From this point on, most of my interactions were with Team A students. The 8 of us did not need a real round of introduction – all we needed was an intense evening of problem solving. We spent hours into the night working on problem sets, and it was genuinely one of the most enjoyable math moments in my life.

Slightly before working on problem sets, we had lunch at a local H-Mart. The chicken-curry I had was very, very salty and had a surprisingly strong scent of ginger. Soon, I was able to visit Target for the first time in my life. Our dinner was brief, at a bar-styled restaurant in the hotel lobby. I decided to have very little food, mostly out of sleepiness.

Oddly enough, nodding off for an hour during dinner made me surprisingly awake during the night. Team A solved problems until 9 to 10 p.m., and we were dozing off at that point. We all gathered at my room for the prep, with 8 students in a room for two. There was a random playing card in our room, and we started playing a classic game of one-card. We talked about life, dating, high school, and more while mindlessly flipping cards, until one of us miraculously removed all of his cards. Emerging victorious, he demanded that we do a rock-paper-scissors round, upon which the loser will have to give his/her crush a phone call. I narrowly avoided the penalty at the last round, and the victim was chosen.

But here’s the catch: all of us were too sleepy to lengthen the party, and the call-the-crush event slipped our minds. Awake for more than 30 hours, we hurriedly returned to our rooms, and drifted asleep.

Day 2 – Saturday, HMMT

I woke up after around 6 hours of sleep, but I felt as if I slept double that time. We grabbed a quick lunch at the hotel restaurant. I was shocked to see watermelon being served in the middle of February. Unfortunately, it ran out completely before I could grab it from the bar-style buffet.

Our team headed to the MIT campus, and took a group photo. We would begin with the team round, and we went inside a modest lecture classroom on our own. Our proctor arrived half an hour late, so we had time to look around the classroom. The six-paned chalkboard immediately caught my attention, and we spent time scribbling calculus on the board (we were all taking AP Calculus in our respective schools).

The team round finally began, and most of the competition feels like a hurried frenzy from that point. Three individual rounds followed – Algebra & Number Theory, Combinatorics, and Geometry – then lunch began. The HMMT organizers prepared pizza for all participants. And I realized a crucial American survival tip: burgers and burritos are great no matter where you go, pizzas not nearly as much.

We headed for the Guts Round, the finale of HMMT team rounds. It involves dozens of teams gathered in a single hall, solving problem sets given in batches. The seating chart did not allow us to communicate easily, as us 8 participants had to sit in a narrow line, with no end-to-end communication.

After a 90 minutes that felt like hours, the day came to an end – or almost did. All participants gathered at a large lecture hall for the finalist announcements. The HMMT Integration Bee and a phenomenal A Capella performance preceded the celebrations. Most of our teammates were asleep by the finalist announcements. Around 8 p.m., the entirety of the competition was over, and our team could return to the hotel.

We ordered food for eight in the hotel restaurant, and dined in our rooms. Actually, eight of our team moved into my room to eat. The cheese-chicken sandwich I ordered was surprisingly nice. The second night we spent chatting, watching so-bad-it’s-good American TV shows, and playing rounds and rounds of paranoia. The game basically has a person ask a question to the person on her left, and the recipient of the question responds with a name of any person in the room. The designated person and the person who answered play rock-papers-scissors, and the original question is revealed if the designated person wins. Otherwise, he or she goes paranoid.

We moved to another person’s room to continue. From that point, I was extremely sleepy and decided to go up to my room, despite all others begging me not to do so. As I was about to get to sleep, I discovered something foreign in my sight. It was a black coat that belonged to one of the participants. I obligingly delivered the coat to the owner, and had to return to the other room. I ended up staying there, with the drowsiness gone momentarily. We played truth or dare until around 2, and finally went to sleep.

Day 3 – Sunday, Lectures

The next day involved guest lectures happening in MIT campus, organized by HMMT. I was able to attend three lectures, all of which I found very interesting.

From around 10 a.m., The Architecture of Intelligence by Professor Manolis Kellis, MIT, began. His lecture was of great influence to me, and I found his stance very interesting. Concerning the topic of A.I., Professor Kellis says that we “need all the help we can get” to solve important problems at the frontiers of human well-being. His research fields actually aligns with biology and medical sciences, but he is also at the frontiers of A.I. research to further advances. Among great scholars’ opinions in A.I., Professor Kellis seems to be on the far end of one spectrum – one of great positive impact and nuanced optimism – and I enjoyed his lecture. After the lecture, the professor was very popular. I had to wait around 10 minutes in line until I could ask him a few questions. Thankfully, he answered my questions on the role of human intelligence and the landscape of transition. Interestingly, Professor Kellis believes the concept of agency, or the drive to discover and set directions for a problem, is better left to humans alone. I expected an opposite response given his stance.

Right after that was a lecture by Erin Winnick Anthony, an inspiring science communicator who shared her journey in science journalism, communication, and competitive pinball. Learning of her track record and her message that communicating the work you pursue in STEM is valuable were of great impact. I also had the chance to talk to her in person, from an unexpected opportunity. She was enjoying the pizza the HMMT team gave out, and I was able to ask her a few questions over a burrito (it was spectacular, far exceeding any well-known burritos in Korea). I asked her about tech entrepreneurship and science communication, and she offered insightful ideas on people who actually pursue that path. She also advised that it is wise to find valuable people to bring to your team. I enjoyed the conversation greatly. I sent both Professor Kellis and Erin Winnick Anthony a thank-you email after my arrival in Korea.

Shortly after lunch, we travelled to a pho place in Harvard Square called Le’s. The pho was great, but my four-time HMMT alum roommate strongly advised me to never drink their water. Apparently, many participants fall ill the next day after drinking their water. I ordered a mango smoothie to mitigate the hazard. I shared half of the smoothie with the table next to us, who were also in the Korean HMMT team but not in Team A.

After pho, we made a trip to the Harvard Coop. I bought a keyring, some note paper, and post-its for $50. I browsed the bookstore section of the Coop, waiting for our competition director to wake up. He finds it impossible, year after year, to adjust to jet lag and was dozing off in a couch.

We returned to the hotel by passing through the Harvard campus. We could barely admire the campus until we had to hurriedly catch an Uber to the hotel. With all pressure gone from the previous day, we ordered food to our rooms and spent a few hours in a similar manner from yesterday night. I sat down in the bed, and we were chatting about school life, what one sees in a girlfriend/boyfriend, and recent breakup stories. And, surprisingly enough, I fell asleep on another person’s room. When I woke up, all of my other teammates moved to yet another room after a noise complaint. I realized that I have slept for an hour straight, and felt extremely energetic. I joined my teammates, and we inadvertently decided to pull an all-nighter party. As the clock approached 2 a.m., we spent hours telling scary stories. I recall the stories not being nearly as scary as I imagined. All of my teammates, who stayed up until 5 a.m. and had to prepare for the flight the next day, were too scared to move to their own rooms to shower. We hesitantly walked out and took a shower, and headed down for the last breakfast at Boston.

Day 4 – Monday (EST) / Tuesday (KST), The Flight

Boston’s Logan was much smaller than Incheon International Airport, and much less organized, but I loved it because of the people. All the officers were extremely friendly (possibly because we were a group of teenagers), and the passport control was very fast. In less than five minutes, we were well within the terminal, awaiting departure.

Despite the busy hum of the airport, the Team A’s table was surprisingly quiet. A sense of calm was in our eight members as we prepared for boarding, one by one. I exchanged a glance, and a smile, with one of them as I moved into the plane. And we departed Boston, and took a part of it with us.