Raghav Arun

I do competition math, and I teach it.

I've been on North Carolina's ARML Division A state team for multiple years, where I earned the team's top individual medal while we won first place at our site and finished 12th in the nation. I'm a 6x AIME qualifier, a MathCON national finalist with National Champion, Gold and Silver finishes across multiple years, and a three-year Top 10 finisher at the NC High School State Math Contest. As co-captain of the NCSSM Math Team, I've competed at HMMT, PuMAC, the Duke Math Meet and the Stanford Math Tournament.

The teaching part matters more to me. Over five years I've coached roughly 300 middle schoolers for free, running MATHCOUNTS teams at Community House Middle School and Charlotte Middle School, plus open competition-math classes that have reached students in up to 20 states. I donated $6,000 of my camp earnings to keep those classes free, and the teams I coach have placed Top 10 in the state. I also run ContestMath.com, a competition math site.

What I try to teach is not a formula list. It's how to explain your own thinking, because a student who can say why a step works can rebuild it when the problem changes.

Away from math I play rated chess, with a peak USCF rating of 2070 and 790+ USCF games since first grade, and I'm captain and lead choreographer of SAATH, NCSSM's competitive Indian fusion dance team. Calculating variations under a clock is where I first learned to think in probabilities, and I use that every time I size up a hard math problem.

North Carolina School of Science and Mathematics

High School Diploma, Mathematics · 2025 – 2027

NCSSM is a selective public residential high school for students in science and mathematics. Coursework includes AP Calculus AB and BC, Combinatorics and Game Theory, Graph Theory, Physics 4020 and 4120, AP Microeconomics, AP Psychology, AP Computer Science Principles, and Game Design with Modern Engines.