USAMO and College Admissions

WongTongTong
Sat, 26 May 2012 22:56:00 +0000

^Agreed: most students in top math competitions do understand material well beyond the regular combinatorics, number theory, algebra, geometry, etc. covered in high school. I’ve heard accounts of IMOers bashing inequalities with Lagrange when it could have easily been done with Muirhead’s/Holder’s/etc. (not saying this is elegant, but they are well aware of tools past elementary mathematics).