<p>All right, for background information, I'm a high school junior who's only taking Calc BC this year. My school has traditionally never offered the AMC, and this year is no exception, as I tried lobbying them to sponsor it without success. I'm not sure if many AMC participants have been through this experience I'm about to tell. A few months ago, I found out that a university an hour away administered the AMC 12B, so I signed up and started doing some serious studying. I bought Art of Problem Solving Volume 2 and borrowed Volume 1 from the library, and then dedicated basically my entire life in the last two months to reading through every chapter (learning combinatorics, number theory, geometry theorems, graph theory, etc. from scratch), working through all the problems, and then reviewing the texts over and over. Two weeks before the exam, I started doing timed practice tests using the most recent past AMC 12's, usually one per day and sometimes two, and I always scored somewhere between a 110 and a 120 (~140 on an easier test). I was definitely counting on making it into the AIME, which I thought I would do at least decently on.
Yesterday I took the AMC 12. I made sure to get plenty of sleep the night before. During the test, I thought I was on a roll - answering 17 out of 25 questions without guessing. But later, as I reviewed over the problems, I realized I made SIX careless errors, each on a different problem, which reduces my score to less than 80. Next year, it will be too late for whatever score I get on the AMC (if I even decide to go through all the hassle just to take it) to matter.
Now, I know there are lots of people who started training for math competitions much earlier in their lives, but I didn't realize that my last chance at ever doing well in math before college admissions would go down the drain like this. I have heard of plenty of students who have made AIME without preparation. I sacrificed so much for this math competition and got nothing out of it. Now I am really depressed and don't know what I'm going to do with my future, since I don't have any other talents. Has anyone heard of a similar experience or have any suggestions on how a person who has never shown a particular talent can turn his life around?</p>
<p>I had been studying for the AMC 10 for months and I really thought I might do good, might even qualify for AIME. My score was 69. I was wrong, apparently.</p>
<p>" Next year, it will be too late for whatever score I get on the AMC (if I even decide to go through all the hassle just to take it) to matter." I think that’s your problem.</p>
<p>OP, I think you have to ask yourself what motivated you to study so hard for the AMC’s. If it was a genuine love for mathematics, you have hardly reached the end of the road. There are a variety of advanced courses and research opportunities in college, and none of them have AIME qualification as a necessary prerequisite. By the tone of your post, I get the feeling your goal was a boost in college admissions. Math competitions really aren’t great for this purpose, as they require lots of practice and a certain amount of raw intelligence. Despite what you heard on AoPS, AIME qualification is not easy, and I think you should be really proud of your score. After only a couple months of practice, you scored better than 75+% of the highly motivated, bright juniors and seniors who took this test. The only two AIME qualifiers I have heard of in my school besides this year (me and another kid qualified on the 10A) only managed AIME qualification as seniors, and they are still talked about as math geniuses. Sometimes math takes time to settle in (that has certainly been true in my case) and I think you would score significantly higher next year if you choose to take it. If you like math, you definitely did not “get nothing out of it” and if you don’t like math, you have incredible persistance to be able to study from such difficult texts for two months. Find something you enjoy and work at that. Good luck!</p>
<p>In real life I have this superpower where I can make other people’s self-esteem go up just by talking about myself. Let’s see if it works over the Internet…</p>
<p>I got a 54 on the AMC 12 junior year. I took it at a nearby-ish university because my school doesn’t have a math club. I’m really lazy, so I didn’t do much prep except for looking over a couple of the old AMC tests on the Art of Problem Solving website. I was late getting there, and I only answered a few questions before I panicked and left early. I didn’t know how to solve any of the problems because I don’t have any natural talent for math. Later that year I got a 4 on the AP Calculus BC test even though almost half of the people who take it get 5s, but I still want to major in math because I’m crazy and it expands my mind and stuff. </p>
<p>I made Aime as a 7th grader, Now as an 8th grader will fail to make Aime due to 5 dumb mistakes on the 10b. And I’m pissed that the 10a was canceled. My advice is, regardless of the result, what is important is what you get out of it. How you understand your weak-points. Remember being 16-17, a minor defeat like this may seem all the world right now, but later in life there will be bigger things and you should draw from lessons learned from failures like this one to propel you through your career.</p>
<p>You should keep in mind that math contests (especially something like the AMC) do not measure your ability at mathematics. The AMC is supposed to test your knowledge of various tricks that the vast majority of people forget, and does not measure your problem-solving ability in the same way that a test like the AIME does. For that matter, math competitions in general don’t measure problem-solving ability in the best way.</p>
<p>There is a lot more to math than solving a 3-step AMC problem. You might be great at solving extended problems (research), teaching it to other people, and you might simply appreciate its beauty. </p>
<p>In any case, if you feel bad that you couldn’t do as well as you thought on a math contest, there’s always the Putnam for when you’re in college. </p>
<p>@mapletree7</p>
<p>Uhh I think the AMC does measure your problem solving ability because you have to think outside of the box. Most questions are about approaches, not formulas or tricks. It take exposure to many problems to get better in an area, not just learning “tricks”.</p>
<p>Wow, being a new member, I did not expect all these posts in such a short time. But to explain a little bit more, I do truly enjoy math and have always found it to be my favorite subject in school. Only recently have I started becoming aware of shortcomings of the school curriculum (such as too much repetition and not enough emphasis on proofs), which is why I wanted to start learning more stuff on my own, as it seems that many talented math students have done here. I am often prone to careless mistakes, which have hurt my SAT Math scores, so I was really hoping to have more luck with the AMC, but oh well. I hope that anyone who reads this might be able to learn from my mistakes and pursue math research if competitions don’t work out for them. There aren’t too many opportunities in my area, but I will definitely start doing research and consider giving the Putnam a shot in college. :)</p>
<p>@Jugglebrosjr - I have the same tendency as you to make careless mistakes on tests. I recently took the AMC 10 (A) and failed. Badly. Given, this was with absolutely no prep, but it still killed me because I absolutely love math and think it’s one of the most fascinating things ever. It just made me upset how I’ll never be able to qualify for AIME because I don’t possess that “raw intelligence”.</p>
<p>I don’t believe that the AMC measures your mathematical ability anymore. People who qualify for AIME and go beyond certainty are EXTREMELY good at math, but people who don’t aren’t necessarily bad. Math isn’t just about being able to solve 25 problems in 70 minutes, math is about thinking and pondering on a problem for months. Don’t give up, because qualifying for AIME doesn’t make you a mathematician; passion and deep thinking does.</p>
<p>Good luck with Putnam. (:</p>
<p>(Btw, have you considered applying to any math programs over the summer? I’m applying to a few; it seems like you’re a junior, so you still have the summer between junior and senior year to do something.)</p>
<p>@Jugglebrosjr, you should be aware of a few things. First of all, there are some kids who live and breathe for these math competitions. Many of them will have started preparing or competing in elementary school, or at least in 6th grade. My daughter loves math and she did her first competition in 5th grade and participated in Mathcounts throughout middle school. She’s a senior now, and she does about 5 different math competitions each year now, including AMC and she has qualified for AIME each time she took AMC. She’s been spending one to a few hours per week on competition math for the past 7 years now. And yes, she took the AMC again, because it’s something she enjoys and cares about, even though colleges will never know if she gets to the AIME or beyond this year. But there are plenty of kids in the high school math club who train every week, many of them for years going back to 6th grade Mathcounts, who don’t qualify. Like many things, success at this depends both on training and on talent. And we know that there are kids who are <em>way, way</em> more serious about these competitions than my daughter or her fellow math club students are. They’re training for 5+ hours per week even in middle school. Some even have classes for it at their schools. They’re attending math competition prep camps over the summer. Your post struck me like someone who spent 2 months playing soccer all the time, then got upset they did not make the varsity team, which is composed of kids who have been committed to soccer since age 5. And was only in it to impress colleges anyhow.</p>
<p>The good news is that competition math doesn’t require the same set of skills as real math. There’s no reason you cannot be successful at math or a math-based occupation even if you weren’t a competition math star.</p>
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<p>I phrased that poorly. “Tricks” are equivalent to knowledge of many approaches.</p>
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<p>I agree with the second statement here, but the first is somewhat inaccurate. Competition math (especially exams like the AIME, USAMO, Putnam, etc.) definitely does require a similar set of skills to real math.</p>
<p>Only to a point. Most real math isn’t done with a clock ticking. And people have a much better opportunity to correct mistakes than in competition math. </p>
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<p>Agree 100%.</p>
<p>It’s nice to see other people on here who believe that math competitions don’t measure your mathematical ability.</p>
<p>Well, they do to some extent, but they also emphasize speed and accuracy and familiarity with the sort of things those particular test-writers like to test. Not everyone with a lot of math insight can work fast and error-free.</p>
<p>I’ve been doing math competitions for quite a while now. However, I missed AIME by 1 question on BOTH of the dates (well, depends on the 10B cutoff, but I’m pretty sure it won’t be 114). How? I made numerous stupid mistakes.
Honestly, math competitions are one of the most difficult competitions to jump into and do well in without YEARS of experience. Even I started relatively late (summer after 7th grade), but I’ve been involved in competition math since 5th grade. If it makes you feel better, watch the Olympics, where people train their entire lives to have one bad run (or flip, trick, skate, etc.).</p>
<p>I don’t know about you guys but school math is repetitive and requires no creative thinking whatsoever. On tests and quizzes, the problems are very plain and boring.</p>
<p>I feel like math competitions actually require you to think outside the box.</p>
<p>Yes, which is why it’s a great activity for anyone wishing to improve their problem-solving skills. </p>
<p>@ catchinginfinity
Yes, I have applied to PROMYS, but since it seems to be very selective, I’m not putting too much hope into making it in. I had fun with those application problems though.</p>
<p>@Jugglebrosjr - I was initially planning on applying to PROMYS, too, but I haven’t finished the problems yet. Got 4 done in December because I was super hyped, but just kind of abandoned it since. 
Not much time left, now…</p>