George Jiang, 2025 Texas Pathfinder cohort
A serene fourth grader from Austin, TX, George Jiang possesses a fierce determination that shines through both his interests and his work.
For example, ‘Diary of an 8-bit Warrior,’ is his favorite book series. The story follows a young Villager named Runt as he seeks to become a Minecraft warrior. Villagers are non-playable characters in the world of Minecraft that are just kind of… there, doing mundane tasks in the background. In the series, Runt’s ambition sets him apart. He wants to be exceptional.
In addition, while singing with his school choir George gravitated toward one song in particular: the 2014 Fall Out Boy hit, “Centuries,” which, according to the band, was written as an empowering song about how “a lot of legendary tales start from humble beginnings.”
Looking at what George has accomplished so far, it isn’t hard to see why he loves these books and adores this song.
His mother, Fang Yang, recalls that even as a toddler George exhibited a unique grasp of the concepts behind Numberblocks, a math-themed cartoon geared toward kids as old as nine. He passed the TAG (Talented and Gifted) qualifying test in Kindergarten – the earliest grade eligible in his district – and has continued to excel from there. He was nominated for National Math Stars by his third-grade teacher and was placed immediately into Pre-Algebra. He completed the AoPS self-paced course in about three months (the suggested window is nine months), and he’s now working through AoPS Introduction to Algebra.
While his school’s TAG math track places students significantly ahead of grade level. George has outpaced even that. This spring he took a credit-by-examination assessment for sixth-grade math and scored 96%. Next year in fifth grade, he’ll attend middle school for TAG math covering seventh- and eighth-grade coursework.
In the international mathematics competition Math Kangaroo, George has improved his national standings each year. In second grade, he ranked in the top 20 nationally. In third grade he ranked 9th, and in fourth grade he moved five rungs up to rank at 4th. He earned a Gold Medal in the Online Final Round of the International German Math Olympiad in December 2025, and a Silver Medal at the National Mathematics Pentathlon in 2025.
In April, George qualified for 2026 MathCON, a prestigious, two-round math competition open to 4th-12th-grade students across the US and Canada. His score on the online test earned him an invitation to Chicago for the National Finals. Only the top 4% of entrants (777 students this year) advance to the finals.
In May, George joined 13 other National Math Stars students in Chicago, where the team placed second overall among teams from across the US and Canada. Perhaps even more special than their incredible performance was the time they got to spend together. They celebrated with a team dinner where they could all hang out and be themselves — just a bunch of goofy kids who also happen to have immense talent and undeniable ambition.
