I would expect that PG/EG participants in math competitions find themselves up against other PG/EG participants in short order, at which point the number hours of study and practice become a significant determining factor in success. Once "Who wants it more?" is a major part of the activity, it becomes very easy for someone to say, "Not me," or, "Eh... I want it, but not that badly."
This is not right. If you are talking about top 0.1%, then that's +3SD to +6SD (or a bit higher) which is a huge range. There's only so much ground that can be made up with effort.
LAUSD has more than 640,000 students, according to its own website. Of those, approximately 140,000 are enrolled in high school. The top 0.1% of this population would be 140 students. Assuming half of these best-and-brightest are entered into a district math competition (some because they're intrinsically motivated, some to pad their transcripts, and some because they're pushed by adults), that's 70 students at different grade levels competing for one prize, every single one of which is EG or higher.
And that's just for a local prize.
