About the project
Opening the path to international olympiads early
We are a team of four students devoted to the exact sciences: Amina Beiganova, Batyrkhan Beiganov, Timur Kilybaev and Ailin Kilybaeva. Our project grew out of a single conviction — that olympiad mathematics in Kazakhstan should be widespread, accessible and genuinely exciting for children in primary and lower secondary school.
Why this matters
In Kazakhstan, most prestigious international olympiads open to students only from grade 9. We believe those years are lost time. The path into serious science — unconventional thinking, the taste for competition — begins much earlier, before the age of 13. That is the age that lays the foundation for later success. The standing of these competitions speaks for itself: in 2019, the United States ran its IMSO selection with the direct involvement of Harvard University.
What we built
On 8 August 2024 — a date of three eights, 08.08.2024 — we published our book International Mathematics and Science Olympiad: Way to Success. It is not a collection of hard problems, but a training manual for international, national, regional and district competitions.
For more than a year we worked through the vast body of olympiad material entrusted to us by Dr Sun. To make the book genuinely useful, we rethought how the material is presented:
- Organised by topic. We sorted the problems into clear blocks — from exhaustive search, cryptarithms and divisibility rules to fundamental geometry (similar triangles, the Pythagorean theorem) and combinatorics.
- From simple to demanding. Every section opens with accessible theory and worked examples.
- Built for practice. The book includes the demanding Exploration problems, along with detailed author's walkthroughs and solutions for self-assessment. It suits preparation centres and specialist mathematics schools as readily as independent study at home.
Our mission
The book is only the first step. We want to build a strong intellectual community and give students in Kazakhstan the same starting opportunities as their peers in China, the United States, Singapore and other leading countries. Olympiads offer more than knowledge, experience and international prospects. They offer something greater — a community worth belonging to, and friendships that last.
Join the olympiad movement, grow with us, and follow what we do next.
From competing on the world stage to writing the book we needed
Our project began with real experience: victories, hard constraints and obstacles the authors met face to face at the International Mathematics and Science Olympiad (IMSO).
Each year IMSO brings together more than 250 of the strongest students from 19 countries. Alongside the demanding intellectual rounds, the olympiad includes a cultural component in which every national team presents the heritage of its country — which makes it an unforgettable experience as much as a competition.
Our results
Kazakhstan has taken part in IMSO since 2013, and our own story is bound up with the making of that national team.
2019. Amina and Batyrkhan Beiganov pass a rigorous selection and join the official team of Kazakhstan. Family circumstances prevent them from travelling to the olympiad that year.
2020 — 17th IMSO, Indonesia. The olympiad moves online. Our national team is formed from the winners of the national olympiad for grades 5–6, under the guidance of the Daryn centre of the Ministry of Education of Kazakhstan. Under strict proctoring through laptop cameras, Batyrkhan and Timur Kilybaev break through: Timur wins silver, Batyrkhan bronze.
2021 — 18th IMSO, Bogor. Supervision tightens further: the room at the Daryn building is watched by several cameras from different angles. Both improve on the previous year — Timur takes silver again, and Batyrkhan brings home gold.
The obstacle we ran into
As secondary school students we were captivated by IMSO: the sprint of the first round — 25 short-answer problems in 60 minutes — the long logical marathons, and the unpredictable Exploration problems of the final round.
But preparing for it, we hit a wall. There were no past problems or preparation materials in Russian at all. While students in Asian countries prepare at specialised courses with an abundance of textbooks, we worked on our own from whatever English-language problems we could find online.
How the book came about
Recognising that gap, we set out to give thousands of students in Kazakhstan a fair chance to compete. Dr Sun of Taiwan, who has contributed a great deal to the development of IMSO, supported the idea personally: he endorsed the book and granted official access to the olympiad materials from previous years (2012–2019).
The work took more than a year. We translated hundreds of original problems, selected the best, added theory for every topic and wrote out step-by-step solutions in full. A separate chapter collects reflections and personal stories from members of the Kazakhstan national team, many of whom went on to win medals at the International Mathematical Olympiad (IMO).
The project today
The publication of Way to Success on 8 August 2024 turned our own olympiad experience into a guide for the champions who come next. We know from experience that every kind of mathematics an olympiad throws at you can be mastered through steady work. And we will share the real secret of our results: sleep properly before the rounds, set your nerves aside, and take genuine pleasure in solving beautiful problems. Our story is only beginning.
The team
This project is the result of genuine teamwork: each of us brought our own experience, knowledge and skills to the book, the website and our own Way to Success competition.
Amina Beiganova
Lead methodologist and editor of the book, developer of the website
- Contribution to the book
- Served as lead methodologist and editor of the collection. Carried out the substantial work of consolidating and structuring the entire body of olympiad problems, and personally wrote the theory sections and methodological notes for every topic.
- Contribution to the competition
- Coordinated the organisational side and led outreach to schools to bring in young talent.
- Contribution to the site
- Designed and built the project's official website from scratch.
2019 — selected for the official IMSO team of Kazakhstan
Timur Kilybaev
Translator of the source materials, author of solutions, co-author of the competition problems
- Contribution to the book
- Did extensive analytical work translating the original olympiad materials and wrote precise solutions to past problems, pitched so that schoolchildren can follow them.
- Contribution to the competition
- Together with Batyrkhan, was the principal architect and author of the problems for the Way to Success competition, giving them genuine olympiad logic and a competitive edge.
IMSO 2020 (Indonesia, online) — silver medal; IMSO 2021 (Bogor) — silver medal
Batyrkhan Beiganov
Lead content expert, author of the walkthroughs and video explanations
- Contribution to the book
- Acted as the lead content expert. Translated a large body of demanding English-language problems and prepared detailed step-by-step solutions and walkthroughs for them.
- Contribution to the competition
- Developed the problem set for the Way to Success competition and recorded a series of detailed video walkthroughs that help participants work through the reasoning after the contest.
2019 — selected for the official team of Kazakhstan; IMSO 2020 (Indonesia, online) — bronze medal; IMSO 2021 (Bogor) — gold medal
Ailin Kilybaeva
Linguistic adaptation, design of the award materials
- Contribution to the book
- Was responsible for the linguistic adaptation and translation of the problem statements, tuning them to how primary and lower secondary students actually read.
- Contribution to the competition
- Created the visual identity and the design of the certificates and diplomas for the Way to Success competition, and ran the outreach campaign that brought schools into the project.