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Exactly. All of the students at these olympiads have to simultaneously keep up with their usual schoolwork and college prep in addition to their olympiad training. "Indians are too busy studying for IITs" isn't a valid excuse.

The fox and the grapes, my friend. Why is that surprising? Since when are Pakis supposed to be smart? They are not considered smart in the UK.

1) United States of America 2) People's Republic of China 3) Republic of Korea 4) Democratic People's Republic of Korea 5) Vietnam 6) Australia 7) Islamic Republic of Iran 8) Russian Federation 9) Canada 10) Singapore 11) Ukraine 12) Thailand 13) Romania 14) France 15) Croatia 16) Peru 17)...

A country with India's population can't even find six bright students who can ace the IMO all because of the oh so difficult IIT exams? Come on... China # 1 India # 39

Guys, India's poor performance is not because India doesn't care about the IMO. Give me a break! This article is from 2009:

Info on Wikipedia contradicts lots of the claims here made by the Indians: The Indian National Mathematical Olympiad is a high school mathematics competition held annually in India since 1989. It is the second tier in the Indian team selection procedure for the International Mathematical...

It's not just this year though. India's performance at the IMO has been consistently mediocre. It makes you wonder.

Problem 3 was a bit harder than usual this year. Only 28 contestants received the full 7 points on it: Alexander Gunning Australia Song Yong Choe Democratic People's Republic of Korea Ferdinand Wagner Germany Yuji Yamamoto Japan Justin Lim Kai Ze Malaysia Jiyang Gao...

They're drawn from the families of recent immigrants. From a NY Times article:

Here is Team Canada: Zhuo Qun (Alex) Song Kevin Sun Antonio Molina Lovett Caleb Ji Alexander Whatley Michael Chow And Team United Kingdom: Warren Li Harvey Yau Joe Benton Gabriel Gendler Freddie Illingworth Frank Zhenyu Han

Team America: James Tao Mark Sellke Allen Liu Yang Liu Sammy Luo Joshua Brakensiek

Let's just say if there were an International Blowhard Olympiad, India and Indians would rank in the Top 3 every year.

Why do you think India's performance is so mediocre at the IMO?

Lots of the participants who have won a Fields Medal or EMS Prize are from the 1960s, 70s, and 80s. China only started competing at the IMO in 1985. There's often a time lag between making a significant contribution to mathematics and receiving an award for it. Of course, there are also many...

Exactly. In comparison, the largest European country besides Russia is Germany with a mere 80 million people. The population of China or India could flood Germany 10x over and still have millions to spare.

No, but I find math culture fascinating after watching the BBC documentary Beautiful Young Minds. :-) This is true to some extent. If you look at the Wiki article "List of International Mathematical Olympiad participants" you'll find notable contestants from all areas of the world except...

There is nonetheless a strong correlation between IMO success and a successful career in mathematics: And that's without mentioning all the IMO medalists who don't win a Fields Medal, but do obtain prestigious jobs in academia, engineering, etc.

Not true. Training for the olympiad is a fantastic way to build problem-solving skills and can be bridged into an introduction to advanced college-level math.

As I said, winning an IMO medal is much more difficult than attaining perfect SAT scores.

Exactly. For admission to prestigious American universities, an IMO medal is even more valued than perfect SAT scores.