I am a rising Junior in high school. I was just wondering whether it is too late to start preparing for the AMC 12, and do well enough to qualify for the AIME. If it is not too late, how do you best recommend I spend the next few months to qualify? The highest math I have taken so far is pre-calculus. Thanks in advance!
Have you read the AOPs books?
Have you done any competitive math before, for example your school’s math team? Do you love doing tons of math? If the answer to either of those questions is no, consider why you are motivated to try to qualify for AIME. Start with AoPS (Art of Problem Solving)'s books and resources. It’s never too late to learn more about math and problem solving skills, but most of the AIME qualifiers I know have been doing competitive math since at least sixth grade and enjoy spending many hours outside of school practicing.
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It is too late for you, but you would need a structured scheme to help reach your goal. Among the many institutional academic enrichment programs, Johns Hopkins’ CTY is reputable and it offers individually paced online courses (not free) to help with enabling participation in competitive math programs: Competitive Mathematics Prep; Competitive Mathematics I; Competitive Mathematics II.
I have not as of yet.
I have done mathcounts in middle school, and have also taken the AMC 8, however I did those just for fun (no actual training).
I am a bit confused – are you saying it is too late, or was it just a typo, as the rest of your post contradicts the first sentence?
Much of this is dependent on your abilities.
No preparation is required to take the AMC12. To qualify for AIME, you need to be among the top few thousand students in the country. Most who qualify have been doing competitive math for years. But there may be naturally gifted students who somehow missed out on competitive math and would pick it up very quickly.
PreCalc is sufficiently far along the traditional math curriculum, but be aware that topics like Number Theory and Counting/Combo is typically not taught in secondary schools. Getting up to speed on these is a big ask in <6 months. As is just learning to think I the ways of competitive math.
The AoPS website has all of the AMC12 tests from the last few decades. Try a few, see where you stand, and decide if it’s something you’re interested in tackling. The AoPS Volume 1 book is a good place to start preparation.
I highly recommend the AoPS preparation courses over those from CTY.
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It is NOT too late; sorry, I omitted the all important ‘NOT’.