<p>Re “Athletic and musical opportunities” ( #2154)</p>
<p>True, but very few high school students or their parents have never heard of football or the violin. </p>
<p>The vast majority of students, even at places at New Trier, have no idea that these various Olympiad contests exist. Certainly not in any time to prepare adequately for them.</p>
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<p>And why is this so wrong? Afterall, it is an Olympiad; the math equivalent of the Olympics. Would you blame a gymnast for hiring the best coaches or for practicing relentlessly? Also, I don’t hear people crying foul for students taking SAT prep classes. If anything, the students with success in the USAMO should be applauded for their hard work and dedication. It is a rare student who can make USAMO and not have put a tremendous amount of effort into that accomplishment. And sadly, not everyone who puts in those hours can have success.</p>
<p>This thread moves really fast–this post would have made more sense this morning. </p>
<p>But thought I’d toss in that that Bill Gates started out at Harvard as a math major. He gave up on it when he realized that he wasn’t one of the tippy top math students. Should he have persevered?</p>
<p>I would say he did persevere. Just not at Harvard.</p>
<p>And not in math</p>
<p>Re YZamyatin #2161: New Trier had a 10th grader who qualified for the USAMO in 2011. It is possible that he participated in a math circle in Chicago or at Northwestern, in order to qualify. Usually, though, the initial test in the competition, which is the AMC12 is given in the schools; often the next step toward qualifying, the AIME, is also given in the schools (with exceptions such as the one noted earlier on this thread).</p>
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<p>I am way behind. Want to add that before seriously following CC, I had never heard of USMAO, AIME, and WHATEVER, while both of my Ds attended a competitive hs and were great in math, and admitted to H and Y.</p>
<p>QM,There are always self motivated , academically inclined kids that can be outliers in any school. Even our non magnet public had a 2400 SAT scorer a few year ago. Also took tons of AP’s , a few of which he self studied for according to press about it. If I recall correctly, 17 AP’s comes to mind but I could be wrong. S1 took 10 AP’s and I thought that was alot but this kid went above and beyond what most top students at the school did/were doing.</p>
<p>Bay, if you are from the San Francisco Bay area, I will bet that the AMC12 and AMC10 were offered at the school your daughters attended.</p>
<p>A student has to have a qualifying score on an AMC test first, in order to qualify to take the AIME. Then the student has to do sufficiently well in the combined AMC/AIME scores to qualify for the USAMO. The number of USAMO participants is currently capped somewhere around 300. (It has varied lately, going up to the low 500’s, but the cap has now returned to its earlier, lower level.) </p>
<p>Our local high school offers the AMC, though it is optional for students. Probably most students don’t bother to mention its existence to their parents. Our school newsletter occasionally announced that students could sign up for an AMC test <em>after</em> the test had already been given–they were sort of half-hearted about the whole thing. If the students who do take an AMC test don’t qualify for AIME, they probably don’t hear about the AIME.</p>
<p>Some people who are excellent mathematicians do not particularly like timed competition. No problem with that.</p>
<p>It would not be fair to make an AIME or USAMO score necessary for MIT admission (even if the numbers worked out), because the participation in these exams is geographically concentrated. I don’t think that many student who qualify for the USAMO have teachers who are unable to do well on the AIME themselves. </p>
<p>If a student does have a private tutor (unknown around here), even at NYC rates, the cost would be much lower than many of the traveling sports teams here; lower than the cost of a cello acceptable to the orchestra teacher; much lower than the cost of a good cello.</p>
<p>QM, I am not from the Bay area.</p>
<p>Other than team-based competitions, MathCounts is a pretty big nation-wide math contest. I suspect an excellent performance in that would put you on the radar screen of people in the know about math opportunities and contests, and you may hear about the AMC if you otherwise hadn’t. I suspect people like Evan O’Dorney started to get outside help that way.</p>
<p>FYI, everyone was ‘great’ at math at my high school and it would qualify as an “enriched” environment. About 3% of our small class made USAMO. This was at a time when USAMO was a little more exclusive with only 150 winners, but participation in the AMC is probably higher now. I believe a fifth of high schools in the U.S. participated in the AMC. I don’t remember the exact statistics, but I thought someone said 5000 high schools participated and that there were 25000 high schools in the U.S.</p>
<p>Just in case anyone is interested, you can also qualify for the AIME (2nd round) by solving proplems and mailing them in. The competition is called USAMTS.</p>
<p>^
Mathcounts now runs on ESPN ([Mathcounts</a> Final](<a href=“http://espn.go.com/watchespn/index/_/id/477853/raytheon-mathcounts-national-competition-finals]Mathcounts”>Watch ESPN - Stream Live Sports & ESPN Originals)), just like the Spelling Bee.</p>
<p>It’s understandable that many math inclined kids did not know about AMC10/12 10 years ago. But today, if one googles just about anything related to middle school or high school math, AMC website will show up on the 1st page. And as I posted upthread, taking AMC10/12 only requires some very minimum effort.</p>
<p>Good info, collegealum, “solving problems and mailing them in” triggered a fond memory for me so thanks. H played postal (correspondence ) chess for years- people actually mailed back and forth their moves. So funny to think of now with all the online, computer stuff.</p>
<p>bogibogi,</p>
<p>I never said there was anything wrong with it! Quite the opposite. My point was that USAMO, like any other really great thing, is something that one can practice for and as impressive as it is, doesn’t seem like it should be an “auto admit”. I don’t think all top athletes or violinists are auto admits, either.</p>
<p>So true about top athletes and musicians. They do not necesarily end up at their top choice, but if they really want to play and are good enough, will end up just fine somewhere.</p>
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<p>Athletes aren’t auto-admits at MIT, but at any ivy, my understanding is that they are auto-admits as long as they clear a certain academic index.</p>
<p>They are still not “auto-admits.” The coach needs to really want them and for a very serious athlete in one of the big sports (think football basketball), the Iyy League is not necesarily where they are aiming for, even if they are a good student.</p>
<p>MIT actually really doesn’t let stats slip with recruited athletes. If they have good enough stats to get in anyway, being a high-level athlete that a coach wants might tip the scales, but they don’t get that lower-stat allowance that they do at ivies.</p>
<p>There are too many subjective components in figuring out who is the best athlete or musician. How much more objective can it be to have everyone take the same test at the same time?</p>
<p>A quick search shows that in 2010, about 412,000 students took the AMC. Then roughly 6500 qualified for the AIME. From there, the top 500 students were lucky enough to sit for the USAMO. That is quite impressive.</p>
<p>“True, but very few high school students or their parents have never heard of football or the violin. The vast majority of students, even at places at New Trier, have no idea that these various Olympiad contests exist. Certainly not in any time to prepare adequately for them”.</p>
<p>I’d never heard of these contests but when I checked the USAMO site I discovered that one of the twelve 2012 winners lives in the next town over from mine. I googled his name. Every hit on the first two pages was for a math site. Not a single mainstream newspaper story or even a mention on the school website.</p>