<p>Hey CC! As a sophomore this year, who is interested in participating in at least one of the international science olympiads (USAMO, USABO, etc), I was wondering whether other participants are part of a school "team" or if the olympiads were more of an individual effort. I'm currently considering initiating an olympiad program at my school next year and was wondering if any of your schools have teams and if so, how often do they meet and how do they study? Thanks for the help.</p>
<p>Those are all individual tests from what I’ve heard.</p>
<p>I mean certainly after you get through the national level and go to the summer training program, you go as a “team” to the international competition, and then it’s another individual test. </p>
<p>But you can have an olympiad club at your school training for it.</p>
<p>Try the science olympiad, something entirely different.</p>
<p>If you’re just starting out as a sophomore, unless you’ve been taking college level mathematics courses your shot at USAMO is pretty much nil. The USAMO kids have been practicing religiously since middle school. However, you may have a chance at the science olympiads.</p>
<p>I disagree, Let’s first of all separate the USAMO and USACO (math and programming) from the others, since the others are generally easier and less common/rarer to adminstrate.</p>
<p>By far the math olympiad is the hardest olympiad, with the most competition and 400k students trying out for the AMC 10/12 every year. Though I took it first as a freshman and did mediocre, nothing worth noting, and now I am racking up for the USAMO, doing world online olympiad training, and considering saturday schools for olympiad at New York University or Pushkin Academy (I live in NYC), but yes in general Olympiad is mad hard, and most are prepping for a while.</p>
<p>USABO, USAPhO are really hard, but just read read read, I personally know I can’t expect much support from school, so online forums and books are my help, as well as resources and professors to ask when necessary.</p>
<p>Thanks. These replies were quite disheartening. I guess I’ll look into the science olympiads.</p>
<p>Think of it like this… it’s the academic olympics.</p>
<p>America wants the best of the best. Which means these people can compete with other countries’ best of the best.</p>
<p>Man, how I wish that programs like these were well known where I come from. That way I could’ve started preparing earlier. The only reason I know about olympiads, RSI, TASP, etc. is because of CC. I’m thankful for that.</p>
<p>intellexi is wrong about the college courses thing. Most math college courses that people usually take (calculus, linear algebra) have little or no usage on AMC/AIME/USAMO/IMO. Combinatorics, number theory, geometry, and algebra (all of which don’t require calculus etc.) are the main topics on these competitions.</p>
<p>Also, it is not impossible to make USAMO if you start in high school. Making USAMO is looking pretty reachable to me and I only started seriously doing competition math in the past year (and I’m a junior). Of course, this depends on both how hard/smart you work and how intelligent you are: if you aren’t at least decent at math (i.e. As or even Bs in math courses), it is not likely you will be able to make USAMO any time soon, and if you don’t work hard, you better have a LOT of math talent to make up for it.</p>
<p>(Of course, doing well at USAMO and IMO requires a lot more than making AIME or even making USAMO. But the same principles apply: hard work and talent are both important.)</p>
<p>I’m not an expert on other olympiads, but here’s my point of view. USABO, USNCO, and USAPhO are pretty similar in that a solid knowledge of the subject matter gained from appropriate first-year college-level textbooks (maybe supplemented by more advanced books), a decent dose of intelligence, and a good deal of practicing on problems will carry you a long way (though maybe not necessarily to internationally competitive levels). NACLO (a linguistics olympiad) actually requires no prerequisite knowledge besides, say, a basic understanding of our calendar system, arithmetic, etc.; it is mostly logic-based. (A lot of math people are involved in this.) IOL (or ILO), the international equivalent is the same way.</p>
<p>These are all tests taken individually, but a “team” environment in which you gather to discuss sample problems, background info, etc. can be helpful for preparation. My school has a math team which mostly focuses on AMC/AIME-level problems during meetings and organizes team selection for some team-based math events. There is no such thing for biology, chemistry, physics, or linguistics olympiads here, but the people who do those are usually in the group of “smart” people who get good grades with considerably less effort than the masses in mostly AP/honors courses, do the team-based academic competitions, go to math club, etc. and thus can probably find at least one other person interested.</p>
<p>This is probably a lot different from most schools, but it gives you a picture of what’s possible given a bunch of interested students. For people who aren’t as fortunate to have such surroundings, there are a bunch of resources on the internet. The Art of Problem Solving (at artofproblemsolving.com) is an extremely good resource for competition math problems, math discussions, information about math events/summer programs, etc.; almost everyone who does well at AIME/USAMO is an AoPSer. I don’t know of the equivalent for other olympiads, but there is a decently active USAPhO+ level physics forum on AoPS. Google will hopefully help.</p>
<p>The bottom line is: if you want to show off pro math/science competition skillz to colleges or just like the idea of math/science competitions, you should pick up a textbook or three and start reading and doing those practice problems. If you’re interested, keep going, find other interested people, whether in real life or online, and make use of any resources you can find.</p>
<p>Thanks energize. I found your post helpful. However, I did attain straight Bs for my Alg II class last year XD, but I got an excuse. It’s impossible (not exaggerating) to pull off straight As when you literally turn in less than 50% of your homework and homework is worth 20% of your grade (you can do the math). Since then, I have turned in all homework assignments for my precalc class and currently have the highest average in the class although that doesn’t account for much by CC standards. Thanks for the info about the Art of Problem Solving site. I’ll look into it.</p>
<p>Don’t worry too much about that; I got straight Bs in all my middle school math classes, even with turning in almost all of my homework and putting some effort into them. (My 6th grade teacher suggested that I should take non-honors math, but my parents and my gifted status overwrote that, which turned out to be the right choice.)</p>
<p>Wow. That’s an inspiring tale. From barely above-average 6th grade math student to potential USAMO qualifier. Also, how long do you think I would have to study to even think about qualifying for USAMO?</p>
<p>Depends on your ability, which I can’t really gauge from your grade since I don’t know how difficult your teacher’s tests are, etc. A few months gaining background and doing a bunch of problems should get you to AIME-qualifying level pretty quickly. (The AoPS Introduction series with AoPS Volume 1 is good for this.) After that, you need a lot of practice with AIME-level problems, along with a decent bit of theory, in order to qualify for USAMO (9+ on AIME generally does it if you aren’t extremely bad with timed multiple choice tests like the AMC). I recommend the AoPS Intermediate series and AoPS Volume 2 for this. </p>
<p>(Note: if your algebra classes were pretty decent in covering material, then you can probably start with Intermediate Algebra, then Precalculus after that. You should definitely start with the Intro parts of Counting and Probability and Number Theory, though; school curricula almost universally don’t cover those well. But above all, you MUST use previous AMC/AIME problems.)</p>
<p>Well I haven’t competed mathematically since elementary school. First in county! Woot! That has no bearing on my present ability now, though. Thanks for the advice. Hopefully these tactics will help me. </p>
<p>Man o man, how I wish I knew about olympiads earlier.</p>
<p>well, what really jumped me was this summer math program, afterwards I spend anywhere from 4-15 hours a week in math, I am actually trying to spend more, because in Math Olympiads for the AMC and AIME alone, you don;t use calculators so really have to be fast with everything, whether it’s tricks for adding, multiplying, or just finding ways to invalidate operations. In Geometry there’s a quite few ways to go, most of them wrong, and while I don’t care if you got an A or B, since it depends on your intelligence not your hw and class atitude, I must say, most students with an A average will not do well, simply because unlike school work, these math tests FORCE you to think, you can’t really get away with memorizing formulas, in some cases maybe, but you really need a feel for math. </p>
<p>But like the others said, it’s not too late!</p>
<p>Imo… the AMC should be an easy test to get through… at least the copy of last year’s test.
The AIME is certainly more difficult… and my math club meets to work on the problems. </p>
<p>USNCO… I have to start that. In Chemistry club.</p>
<p>Haha we call it NChO (Nacho) not USNCO. I’ll try for that, but not getting my hopes up. And of course I’ll go for USAMO, but I’ll be happy just getting to AIME.</p>
<p>The College Level mathematics thing was just a statement used to give you guys an idea of what these kids are like. Kids starting in the 9th grade <em>may</em> get qualified for USAMO etc. but I guarantee that none of the kids at the training camps started that late.</p>
<p>This is for mathematics btw.</p>