The Putnam contest, which has been called by Time Magazine the "World's Toughest Math Test", consists of 12 challenging problems, to be solved over 6 hours. Each problem is graded on a 0-10 point scale, for a maximal total score of 120 points. As in past years, nobody came close to achieving a perfect score: the highest score among all 3640 participants was 101 points. A score of 67 points, or slightly more than half of the maximal score, was enough to place in the top 1 percent, and 10 points (corresponding to a single problem solved correctly) was enough to place in the top 20 percent of all participants. Less than half of the participants received a nonzero score, so the median score was 0 points!
Eleven UIUC students participated in the Putnam. The top scorers among the local participants were Sander Parawira, with 20 points and a rank of 390 out of 3640, James Arnemann (12 points, rank 544/3640), and David Grayson, Benjamin Kaduk, Matthew Krafczyk, and Aaron Wittrig (10 points each, rank 747/3640).