In this context, our answer to "how do you choose which ones to enter" has been "just enter them all" - but that obviously only works because there aren't ridiculously many and entering them is logistically easy for us.
This is probably the situation in most countries. However in the US it does seem that there actually are "ridiculously many" math competitons. But this short and insightful (as expected) article "Pros and Cons of Math Competitions by Richard Rusczyk"
www.artofproblemsolving.com/Resources/articles.php?page=pc_competitionsbrought my attention to the fact that there are actually some (a lot?) of math competitons out there that are probably not worth bothering with. When I started searching online I found a
really long list of competitions. But apart from the obvious ones of MATHCOUNTS and the AMC series, I can't separate the wheat from the chaff, especially for elementary school kids who are not eligible/ready for MATHCOUNTS/AMC, but also for future possibilities as well.
That's one main reason for this thread. Out of the really long list of possible US math competitons, what are the really worthwhile ones?
