About 200 students from 25 middle, intermediate and junior high schools in four counties are registered to compete in the 31st annual Lehigh Valley MATHCOUNTS ® Feb. 7 with a snow date Feb. 8.

The event will be held at Springhouse Middle School, 1200 Springhouse Road, Allentown.

Students will take written tests 9:15 to 11:45 a.m. in the gymnasium. The top 10 scoring students will face off in the Countdown Round, a "Jeopardy" style oral competition, 1 p.m. in the school auditorium.

Organized by the Lehigh Valley Chapter of the PA Society of Professional Engineers for students in Lehigh, Northampton, Carbon and Monroe Counties, the event is one of about 20 Pennsylvania competitions. Regional winners advance to the state competition March 27 and 28 held in Harrisburg.

Students and coaches devote many after school hours to prepare for what some have called the "Olympics of math."

The 2015 National MATHCOUNTS ® Competition will take place in Boston, Mass. May 8 with Raytheon Corporation as the title sponsor. Nationwide approximately 40,000 students, representing more than 5,500 schools will participate in the 2015 Mathcounts® competition.

Lehigh County schools participating in the event are: Eyer Middle School; Harrison Morton Middle School; Lower Macungie Middle School; Orefield Middle School; Saint Ann School; Saint Joseph the Worker School; Saint Thomas Moore School; Southern Lehigh Middle School; Southern Lehigh Intermediate School; Springhouse Middle School and The Swain School.

Prizes at the Lehigh Valley competition include scholarships for math and/or science courses at Cedar Crest College, Moravian College, Lafayette College and Lehigh Carbon Community College and Northampton County Community College.

MATHCOUNTS ®, a program of the National Society of Professional Engineers, is a math enrichment, coaching & competition program promoting middle school mathematics achievement in every U.S. state & territory to provide students with the foundation for success in science, technology, engineering or mathematics careers.