Contests

Our 2025–2026 Contest Season:

AMC 10/12A: 5pm on Wednesday, November 5, 2025

AMC 10/12B: 5pm on Thursday, November 13, 2025

AMC 8: 5pm on Thursday, January 22, 2026
(weather date: Friday, January 23, 2026)

Purple Comet: 2pm on Saturday, April 18, 2026

The contests will be proctored in person at Simon’s Rock at Bard College in Barrytown, NY (just south of the main Bard College campus in Annandale-on-Hudson).

What are the AMC contests?

(from maa.org/student-programs/amc)

The AMC 8 is a 25-question, 40-minute, multiple choice examination in middle school mathematics designed to promote the development of problem-solving skills. The AMC 8 provides an opportunity for middle school students to develop positive attitudes towards analytical thinking and mathematics that can assist in future careers. Students apply classroom skills to unique problem-solving challenges in a low-stress and friendly environment.

The material covered on the AMC 8 includes topics from a typical middle school mathematics curriculum. Possible topics include but are not limited to: counting and probability, estimation, proportional reasoning, elementary geometry including the Pythagorean Theorm, spatial visualization, everyday applications, and reading and interpreting graphs and tables. In addition some of the later questions may involve linear or quadratic functions and equations, coordinate geometry, and other topics traditionally covered in a beginning algebra course.

The AMC 8 is for “Students with a passion for problem-solving who are in grade 8 or below and under 14.5 years of age on the day of the competition”.

The AMC 10 is a 25-question, 75-minute multiple-choice competition designed for students in grades 10 and below (maximum age of under 17.5 years on the day of the competition). The content covers mathematics typically taught in grades 9 and 10, including elementary algebra, basic geometry (such as the Pythagorean Theorem), area and voume formulas, elementary number theory, and elementary probability. Advanced topics like trigonometry, advanced algebra, and advanced geometry are excluded.

The AMC 12 is a 25-question, 75-minute multiple-choice competition designed for students in grades 12 and below (maximum age of under 19.5 years on the day of the competition). It covers the full high school mathematics curriculum, including trigonometry, advanced algebra, and advanced geometry. Calculus is excluded.

What is the Purple Comet?

(from purplecomet.org/?action=information/summary)

The Purple Comet! Math Meet is an annual and international team mathematics competition designed for middle and high school students that has been held every ear since 2003. Teams of from one to six students compete by submitting solutions to a list of mathematics problems. The problems range in difficulty from fairly easy to extremely challenging. There are too many problems and too little time for any one student to solve them all, so teamwork is critical! In 2022 over 12,000 students competed on over 3998 teams from 62 countries.

There are two levels of competition:

the middle school contest consists of 20 problems to be completed in 60 minutes;
the high school contest consists of 30 problems to be completed in 90 minutes.

We compete in the Mixed Team category for both levels: teams whose members attend more than one school or are home schooled.

Math Contests are not for Everyone

But for some math students, they can be a very positive motivation towards math achievement, and useful exposure to new mathematical ideas. If you are not sure, then we recommend that you think about your own child’s needs and read these posts: