<p>Hmmm, I see that all of those people at least made AIME…</p>
<p>Do you guys know of any math competitions that are somewhat significant that happen in the beginning of the school year? That way I can maybe participate in that and have something competition related on my app?</p>
<p>^People making AIME who got into Harvard may be doing so on the strength of other parts of their application, though.</p>
<p>I don’t think math competitions mattered much to most of those people and I’m pretty sure that making AIME didn’t affect their college decisions. The AMC 12A is typically in early February so if you do well on that you should be able to update colleges with your score. But I wouldn’t worry too much about it, you have research and strong math classes so if the rest of your application is good you’ll do well in college admissions.</p>
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<p>United States of America Mathematical Talent search. Runs from september to early next year.[USA</a> Mathematical Talent Search](<a href=“http://usamts.org/]USA”>http://usamts.org/)</p>
<p>It’s a proof based math competition where there are 3 rounds (could be 2 though), each about a month long. You have that month to either email or mail in your solutions to the 6 questions. The problems are generally AIME level difficulty and sometimes greater, sometimes less. You can use any resource at your disposal except for consulting with any other person on the problem include posting them on online boards.</p>
<p>A national leaderboard is provided throughout this contest. There are no winners, except Gold, Silver, Bronze, and Honorable mention rankings at the end which depends on your score. Receiving the Gold ranking is very impressive because it means you scored very high, close to a perfect score on all the rounds, which is extremely difficult.</p>
<p>USAMTS is one of the better known math competitions but none really compare to the AMC 12 series in prestige, number of participants, or influence in college admissions [not that the AMC 12 series is that important in college admissions]. I suspect most college admissions officers have no idea with USAMTS is.</p>