You don’t need to take the amc or the aime, nor do you need to explain to bs that you didn’t take them because you didn’t know about them. This is exactly the rat race mentality of “ever more” that’s ruining education! Argh. I didn’t even know what those tests were and my kids were in private school. My daughter’s freshman year a mom mentioned she should be taking them. I was like “oh! I had no idea.” Relax. Seriously.
There’s no way ao’s are sitting around discussing things like “maybe this kid who says they love math took the aime but did so badly she didn’t send us the score”. “Yeah, I bet that’s it. I mean she only got a 97% on her ssat math, she can’t actually be a math kid with that score.” Ridiculous!