<p>pardon me for being uninformed, but whats the difference between the AMC-12 and the AIME in terms of difficulty and content? i took the AMC-12 for kicks today for the first time (i don't need it for college admissions and i wanted to skip an english test hehe).</p>
<p>The AIME only has 15 questions and you have 3 hours to take it. You can't use a calculator on it, and it's open response, not MC. (answers range from 0-999 so guessing is kinda of.. difficult to do) um.. <a href="http://www.unl.edu/amc/a-activities/a7-problems/a7-1-archives/2003/AIMEpractice/03AIMEaltq.html%5B/url%5D">http://www.unl.edu/amc/a-activities/a7-problems/a7-1-archives/2003/AIMEpractice/03AIMEaltq.html</a> has some old practice questions</p>
<p>and hah, apparently you really don't need it for admissions ^^ congrats!</p>
<p>To simply put it AIME is a lot harder than AMC12 and AMC12 is hard as it is.</p>
<p>Please do not discuss about the test yet.</p>
<p>ahbim89, here is the second problem from last year's AIME (making it one of the easiest):</p>
<p>Let A be a 90-element subset of {1,2,3,...,100}, and let S be the sum of the elements of A. Find the number of possible values of S.</p>
<p>Fun Stuff.</p>
<p>^^I liked that problem!
But I kept on thinking they wanted me to find the sum of possible values, rather than the number, so I kept getting values that were way too high...and I didn't realize that until the third hour or so...oh well.</p>
<p>oh the dear dear AIME, I do believe I spent the last 2 hours of that test drawing on my scrap paper... lol</p>
<p>fizix, what did you get on the AIME last year?</p>
<p>At least you had the courtesy to be quiet once you admitted defeat. Last year we had one kid who started practicing his French pronunciation right in the middle of the AIME. Kind of distracting...</p>
<p>thanks kasey and weasel... 3 hours?! now i'm prayin i didnt do well today.</p>
<p>My school doesn't administer the test on the alternate date and I wasn't able to take it today (long story), is there any way I can go to some other school and take it? Is it too late to register for it?</p>
<p>I'm very curious as to how the snow days will impact the AMC cutoffs...it seems like a lot of stronger schools are in the north, which is hit much harder by the weather -- so they'll end up taking the alternate AMC, so if they go by the 5% rule it should be much harder to qualify via the alternate AMC than the regular one because better people will be taking the test...the 100 point thing might not hold fast because of the new scoring system...but I'm just rambling now.
Our school's screwed.</p>
<p>
[quote]
fizix, what did you get on the AIME last year?
[/quote]
</p>
<p>A 7. One less than the floor value :(
If I qualify for the USAMO this year it will COMPLETE MY LIFE.</p>
<p>zerinova,</p>
<p>see if a neighboring school or a local university is offering the alternative test. Your school would be losing out on $$ if they didn't re-administer it.</p>
<p>does anyone have the links to previous AMC 12 problems? the AoPS website has the problems but not the diagrams that go along with them.</p>
<p>Here are some old tests. A few of the diagrams didn't copy into PDF correctly so if you're not getting an answer for what you consider an easy problem, then just move on.</p>
<p>Hey fizix, I got a 7 on the AIME last year too. I got the first 7 questions in under 30 minutes, and then I totally burned out. It amazes me how impossible the problems in the latter half of the test are.</p>
<p>I think that a lot of the problems are more intimidating than they are difficult. For example, the massive trig equation on last year's AIME was pretty simple if you knew sum-to-product rules. Unfortunately, I was intimidated along with everyone else and just sorta stared at the problem before moving on :(.</p>