Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion Correlations between AMC8 and AMC10?

DS/DD took the AMC8 last week. Now DS has expressed interest in taking the AMC10. I think it must be due to comments made by the proctor since I never mentioned AMC10 to DS and would not have thought to sign him up to take it since it must be a lot harder. What is the correlation between AMC8 and AMC10? In other words, how well do you think a student should score on the AMC8 before tackling the AMC10?

Not directly answering your question, but if your son finds the AMC 10 questions at http://www.artofproblemsolving.com/Wiki/index.php/2000_AMC_10 interesting to work on, I don't see why he should not take the AMC 10 this year. My 6th grader will.

I'm not familiar with these tests, but on glancing at sample past tests, would I be right to say that there is a significant jump in difficulty from AMC8 to AMC10?

You have to get a 20ish on AMC8 to take the 10.

That may be the policy at your child's school for students in grades 8 and below, but the Mathematical Association of America, which administers the test, has no such rule AFAIK.

One parent previously said her son thought the AMC 10 was much harder http://giftedissues.davidsongifted....The_ultimate_brag_thread.html#Post125483 , and looking at the questions, I agree.

I think if you score high enough on the AMC8 you will be "invited" to take the AMC10. That threshold may be 20. This is the level where MAA thinks you are very strong and wants to see how you do at a higher level.

Bostonian is also right though. Anyone can register for the AMC10 if they want to. No "invitation" is needed.

From the AMC FAQ http://www.maa.org/math-competitions/about-amc/faq :

The AMC 10 is significantly more difficult than the AMC 8. There is no minimum score required to take the AMC 10.

I have general guidelines for recommending the AMC 10 for students in 8th grade and below. I consider the student's score on the AMC 8 and their attitude toward difficult problems.

In general, I recommend the AMC 10 for students in 8th grade with a score of 18 or above, 7th graders with a score of 20 or above, and students in 6th grade and below with a score of 22 and above.

I typically see three types of students in our extra curricular math program: students who are aggressive in their approach to hard problems and motivated by the challenge of a problem they can't solve, laid back students who don't really care whether they can solve a problem or not, and perfectionist students who are very frustrated when they can't solve a problem quickly or face a large number of problems they can't solve.

If the first type of student is close to the guideline score and really wants to take the AMC 10, they can. I recommend laid back students who meet or exceed the guideline score take the AMC 10. I only encourage perfectionist students who exceed the guideline scores to take it before 9th grade.

This is how I make my recommendations, but, ultimately, parents decide whether or not their children will participate.

I second Bostonian's recommendation of AoPS for AMC 10 preparation. You can find a downloadable pdf with live links on our math enrichment program website:
https://sites.google.com/site/polandbulldogmath/poland-seminary-high-school-math-club

Thanks. I find these comments very useful in deciding if/when to attempt certain competitions.

Thanks. You are right - if he wants to do it, I should not stand in the way.

That's my take on it. I don't think you need algebra and perhaps not even pre-algebra for AMC8. Even my DD, who is not mathy and hasn't taken pre-algebra, scored above average on the prior AMC8 tests used as practice. However, I think you do need Algebra and Geometry for the AMC10.

I assume that must be your local school's cut-off - that sounds reasonable. Some of DS' practice scores were at that level although we won't get the 2013 AMC8 results for at least a couple of weeks. DS would have to take the AMC10 at one of the university sites as well since his elementary school doesn't offer AMC10 (or even AMC8). However, this means there is no minimum requirement to sign up for the test.

Of course, they don't bother defining "high scoring" AMC8 students so it is up to the Contest Manager at each school/site to adopt (or not) a minimum criteria.

As 20 is somewhere between top 5% (17-18) and top 1% (22) on the AMC8, it probably means the student will score above average on the AMC10.

Thank you for your well-considered post. I find it interesting that you would recommend significantly higher scores for a 6th grader than for an 8th grader. In a way, I would have thought otherwise. There would be no pressure for DS, who is a 5th grader, to score highly on the AMC10 whereas if he were to take it as an 8th grader, he would probably feel embarass if he perfomred poorly.

Our middle school (grades 6-8) offers both the AMC 8 and AMC 10, and they let our son take the AMC 8 even when he was in elementary school. The test was given after school, and we transported him.

I guess I can always check with our local middle schools, but another parent had told me that her DD's private school wouldn't let her DS take the AMC8 there because they were full. We actually had to drive about 20 miles to one of the colleges, but one plus was that DS and DD weren't the outsiders among kids who were classmates.

The AMC 10 is a much more difficult test, so the top 1% have a shot at an above average score, but a student with a 17 or 18 will likely score below average. While the AMC 8 is a pre-algebra test (you can solve all the problems without algebra), the AMC 10 tests knowledge through pre-calc and is especially heavy in algebra and geometry (the same is true of the AMC 12). You see many 8th graders do well on the test; the number of seventh graders is smaller. You'll see very, very few sixth grade show up on any of the award lists. This is why I want to see higher scores from students in lower grades. I followed the lead of the MAA who requires higher AMC 10 scores than AMC 12 scores to qualify for the AIME. Here's how they explain their rationale:

There's no rush to take the AMC 10. Starting in 7th or 8th grade gives students the opportunity to make the achievement roll and plenty of time to improve their score if they don't qualify for the AIME the first time around.

For those who don't know, this link
http://amc-reg.maa.org/amc_external/SchoolSearchByZipCode.aspx
can help finding possible testing locations.


In that case go for it. There's nothing to lose.

ETA: I didn't see ohmathmom's slightly earlier reply. You should put more weight on her opinion which is clearly better informed than mine.

I understand the MAA's position regarding higher scores on AMC10 versus AMC12 because AMC12 is much harder. It is my understanding that the two tests share 12 questions while the remaining 13 questions are easier (than the shared 12 questions) on AMC10 and harder (than the shared 12 questions) on AMC12.


Your different critieria for different grades on the same AMC8 test didn't make any sense to me until I realized that you were likely using grade as a proxy for curriculum. In our school district, an average 8th grader would be taking Algebra I whereas a GT 7th grader would also be taking Algebra I. Your reasoning didn't apply to DS because although he is a 5th grader, he has been accelerated a couple of times by the school district and is currently taking Algebra I.

DS is not a likely candidate to qualify for AIME at this point since he would have to score in the top 2.5%. However, based on the prior year's AMC10 that he took, DS has an even chance of scoring high enough to qualify for the achievement certificate for 8th graders and below, which looks like about 80 percentile or even a little lower on an easier test. 90 out of 150 is not impossible to get with just Algebra I when you also get 1.5 points out of 6 points for leaving a question blank. In fact, answering 12 correctly, leaving 12 blank and missing 1 will yield a score of 90 out of 150.

Yeah - DS took an old AMC10 and wants to take the next scheduled AMC10 in February.

That clinches it. If a kid has a legitimate shot at a recognition level, and they're willing to try, then I think they just have to go for it.

The small number of test-takers in grades 8 and below do the best on the AMC 10, according to data from
http://amc-reg.maa.org/reports/generalreports.aspx , showing the power of self-selection:

Grade Average 10 A 2013
Location: United States

avg_score,grade,#students
77.2,06,795
78.9,07,1730
79.3,08,3332
69.5,09,23236
71.6,10,26286
68.4,unknown,1337
71.4,all,56717

The data for "06" is actually for grades 6 and below.

Ultimately, as a parent, you are the best person to decide. Your DS has done a practice contest, so he should be aware of how hard it's going to be. If he really want to do it and you don't think he'll be discouraged by the difficulty, I'd let him try it. When I make recommendations to parents, I do consider the grade of the student's math class as opposed to their overall grade level, but we have very few accelerated students in our district.

By the way, the MAA has started to post AMC 8 results. Only the distribution report and a list of students who've received perfect scores is available so far. They update nightly, so we should start seeing Achievement Role recipients soon. I often see some of our students there before I see the score report for all the students.

Is this based on a percentile, or does it always start at 15/25?

The Teacher's Manual says 15 and above (which is approximately the top 40%). The results are pretty consistent year to year, so they go by the score cutoff rather than percentages.

In what sense do you mean "top 40%"?

I really don't know what the MAA means by top 40%; that's the percentage given by them in the Achievement Role description.
http://www.maa.org/math-competitions/about-amc/faq
Looking at the stats, it looks like 12% of students grade six and below make the achievement role.

I see. It says, "AMC 8 Achievement Roll Certificate — given to all students in 6th grade and below who score in (approximately) the top 40%. 15 points or more." Since much less than 40% of contestants (in any grade) get those scores, I suppose they must mean that the (length of the) interval [15,25] is 40% of the (length of the) interval [0,25].

AMC 8 scores have been updated, and you can now see the Honor Rolls (for students and schools) and the Achievement Roll for students grade 6 and lower.

http://amc-reg.maa.org/reports/generalreports.aspx

Ohmathmom, I can't seem to find the current AMC 8 results from your link (or anywhere else!). The drop down menu on the page lists previous years, but I can't seem to find this year- is there another place on the page I should be looking?
Thanks!

Cricket - you were looking in the right place. I saw the scores, etc. posted at that link last night, but they are gone this morning - this year's AMC8 has disappeared from the drop down list. Presumably they'll get them back up soon.

Thanks so much, I have tried a few times since the first link was posted, and was feeling pretty stupid, like I must be missing something obvious. I will try again later.

Yesterday I saw an inconsistency in the lists: a 4th grader was on the "Perfect Score" list (which would be amazing), but was not on the "Achievement Roll" (for scoring at least 15/25 and being in Grade at most 6). Maybe they have some data glitches.

They are only about half way done with scoring. It's not unusual for this year's results to disappear in the morning when they update. They reappear later in the day, try checking in the afternoon and evening.

Interesting! I haven't looked at their stats that closely. I supppose if some schools routinely require their freshmen & sophomores to take the AMC10, then that would definitely shift the average down. It would be informative to know if the normal practice is for all students in a participating school to take the AMC10.

Our district is also very cautious about accelerating students. Some schools don't have any accelerated students while others may have a few at certain points in time. Thanks for the heads-up about the online scores!

That's an interesting interpretation. I did wondered about that myself as 15/25 on the graph looked roughly around 85 to 90 percentile to me.

They must update different reports at different times because I can see my DS' name but the list clearly doesn't include every name that should be on there based on the contest score grade report.

Oh, that makes sense.