Hey guys, is there any way to prepare for the AMC? I want to do well, but I’m not sure where to start and if there are any resources to study with. Sorry if this is in the wrong forum, I wasn’t sure where to put it.
I know my school’s math team uses The Art of Problem Solving books to prepare for competitions.
agree with @Madeline25
Use past AMC10/12 exams (these can be found on AoPS).
AoPS has a good variety of textbooks, including the Introduction to X books (where X is Algebra, Geometry, Number Theory, Counting/Probability).
First Steps for Math Olympians is also good, but there aren’t many problems, and they are mostly just past AMCs.
You can also solve problems from other contests, e.g. ARML, HMMT, CHMMC, PuMAC, etc.
Before I start, I just want to let you know that this is what I did last year, and in order to put it into perspective, I will put some of my stats. Some are good, some are ish, some are quite bad, so just a warning.
8th grade:
- very unserious at math
- took some AoPS classes/read some books
- thought I was doing everything thoroughly at the time, and I kind of was, but I brushed off a lot of problems as “easy”, when they weren’t
- for each problem I got “quickly” (this is dependent on you), I wouldn’t read the book’s solution, and just move on
- this led me to bashing/brute-forcing/trial-and-error-ing nearly every problem
- it took me quite a while to realize that I was really, really bad at thinking intuitively
- AMC 10A: around 100, don’t remember exactly, but it was pretty -ish, not great, but also not a complete failure
8th grade summer:
- don’t remember doing much math
- I took some practice AIMEs, scored around a 2 (I was also dozing off halfway through the test :oops:)
- on the spur of the moment, I decided to take WOOT (no joke this is what happened)
9th grade year:
- I kind of paid attention to WOOT, did some handouts, a little homework
- took a bunch more practice tests
- scores slowly going up, up, up on practice
- AMC 10A: a bit above 120, much better than before, since the cutoff this time was 106, rather than 120 (so it was a pretty hard test)
- AMC 10B: at this point, my confidence was increasing, but not enough to take the 12, got somewhere between 1300 and 140 (fairly easy test, cutoff 120)
- prepped a decent (still not much) amount before the AIME
- after freaking out a lot, I got a 10 on the AIME
- two weeks more of checking answers and verifying on AoPS forums, I got the USAJMO email in the middle of English class (I downright squealed)
- went in to the JMO, heart racing, with a couple bags of Lays chips and a Starbucks, solved some problems, had fun, came out
- checked the forums again, a couple hundred OMGs laters, realized that some of my solutions were correct
- three weeks of jumping at every email notification and phone call, got the email for MOP (5:57 AM in the morning)
Overall, MOP was quite a fun experience, and really is serving as my motivation to seriously do math this year. I can’t really explain the spike from my relatively-atrocious 8th grade scores, to my warm and fuzzy (still quite happy with myself 
) 9th grade scores. I can only attribute it to WOOT. Though this program is really really really expensive (I think upwards of 700-800 dollars), it’s quite worth it: you get 16 classes, a community of people solving really hard problems, lots of handout material, and lots of homework. I can’t say I recall even seriously doing much of WOOT, so either I became really lucky (this is the scary part for my 10th grade year), or I actually gained a couple brain cells.
If you don’t think WOOT is worth it, which I really understand, the AoPS has lots and lots of contests uploaded of all levels. They also have the contests and high school math olympiad forum, which people constantly post new problems on.
Doing any contests, working with people on math, etc. is all really really motivating and pushes you to do more math. If you’re located far from these competitions (ARML, HMMT, CHMMC), then NIMO/OMO is a great thing to do. Some competitions are team rounds (30 problems that eventually get really hard), and I’ve actually made some really good friends out of this. The problems are all written by IMO-ers and really smart people, so there’s no question about whether this is a joke test or not.
You can also use the AoPS books to prepare, but this is quite a bit to cram in before February (3rd, isn’t it?), so I’d suggest doing only Volume 1. Whatever you do, do it well. Don’t BS your way through it, just so that you can say at the end of the day, “hey I did a full chapter!” This is where that cliche line comes in: quality, not quantity. Of course, you should still work to do as many as possible, but don’t give up on a problem immediately, struggle with it, play with it, drink some coffee, and then come back to work on it. Surprisingly, you do not need to eat/sleep/breathe math to do well on the AMC itself (IMO on the other hand…is quite a different story).
Do some harder problems (AIMEs, easy Math Olympiads (not US ones, but I think Indonesian ones are fairly easy), USAMTS), to prepare. This advice might be better for next year’s tests.
Just remember that if you don’t do well, this year, there’s always next year. “If not AMC 10, then AMC 12; if not the AMCs, then Putnam. If not Putnam, grad-school math. If not grad-school, then research/your career.” (quote by AoPS user tmathman).
Here’s a link that I just found to some practice problems:
http://www.artofproblemsolving.com/wiki/index.php?title=AMC_12_Problems_and_Solutions
Literally just realized that I did not explain that WOOT is the Worldwide Online Olympiad Training by Art of Problem Solving.
@sternyc however I wouldn’t recommend WOOT for people preparing for the AMCs, and maybe not even for AIME since it’s more olympiad-level (although I remember WOOT containing a mix of mock AIMEs and mock olympiads).
WOOT is also quite expensive, although I’ve heard that MOPpers are exempt from the $800 or so.
@MITer94 I would say that if you can get above a 100 on the AMC 10, or above a 90 on the 12, WOOT will help you. Okay, it goes a bit over the top, so if you’re looking to just get to AIME and not USA(J)MO, then don’t take WOOT. Just go through Volume 1, maybe a bit of Volume 2, and if you do it thoroughly, you should be fine.
After attempting to analyze my study habits (rather, lack of), I noticed that I do only as much work as I need to scrape by. Hence, WOOT was what opened my eyes and shattered my notion that I was smart; it forced me to at least attempt problems I had no clue how to solve. I think that this realization that I was pretty dumb (in comparison to other WOOTers) was what made me force myself to do a little bit more work than I needed to do. Granted, I didn’t take as much advantage of WOOT as I could have, but it definitely helped me force myself to do more math. If you have the motivation (which I didn’t), then you can succeed without any classes. I think that for me, the classes made me work; knowing that we had spent a lot of money made me at least try a bit.
And yeah, MOPpers automatically get signed up for WOOT (which means it’s basically free, I think sponsored by Jane Street and Dropbox).