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Hi, I'm curious since many on this forum seem to have the experience with competitions....

If math and science competition teams are offered at your schools, (ex. MathCounts, Science Olympiad etc) and your kids' schedule allows it, are kids able to do both or do kids start to "specialize" in math competitions vs. science competitions?

Also, I see many interesting on-line classes offered to prepare for Math Olympiad, AMC, Mathcounts etc. at AoPS etc. Are these course only for kids who definitely intend to compete, or can kids who are just interested in building problem-solving skills benefit from them as well?

thank you.

We homeschool..... so I can't speak to how the schools do it, but DS can do whatever competitions he's interested in. We've never done the online classes... I imagine they'd be useful whether you compete or not, but I can't really say for certain. I coach two math teams myself and I know that what I teach (aiming for the competitions) is broadly useful stuff. We don't spend much time at all on "tricks" -- however if I were teaching a Real Math Class, I think I'd spend more time than I do with these groups on proving our methods. It comes up, but it's not the main focus the way it is when it's just DS and me and the math book. That would be my one hesitation about recommending competition-prep classes... I'm not sure how thoroughly they go into the why.

Hi mominsac,

Last year our middle school had a math club and kids did both math competitions and Science Competitions. The only one we couldn't participate in was Math Counts because it conflicted with Sci Oly. It is a big one to miss out on. But we did AMC 8, Continental Math, Sigma Math, and Math Olympiad. I was very pleased that my DS10 and DS12 were able to participate.

This year there is no math club. Very disappointing. They offered one math competition (AMC 8) and Sci Oly. I think it is the lack of a teacher-sponsor than any other reason for non-participation.

DD11 is in Science Olympiad which conflicts with Math Club so we had to choose. Next year, all this will conflict with Creative Writing so DD will have to choose btw. SciO and that. In our school system most kids can participate in one or two clubs at a time. Science Olympiad starts later than others, so some kids couldn't participate because of the twice a week schedule.

Jen

Thanks everyone for sharing your DCs experiences. We are going into this next year, when all these options open up, so I was curious. It seemed from reading posts here that many math club students do multiple competitions? (ours is only MATHCOUNTS, I believe) -- but I suppose if it is a general math club, then they can participate in various ones throughout the year. This makes sense. For Science Olympiad, efforts are usually geared specifically towards Science Olympiad. That's my take on this now from all of your inputs...

There's a lot of overlap in the types of problems in different math competitions, so if you're preparing for one you might as well do a few!

May I throw a question into this thread? How do you determine what level to compete your child? My son is in 3rd grade but is in Algebra 1 (we homeschool). So, next school year does he compete as a 4th grader or do we enroll him in highschool level competitions?

Generally speaking they recommend that you don't advance a child much if at all for math competitions, just because the kids doing these aren't randomly selected representatives of the average for those grades -- they're predominantly the kids who are similarly advanced in math. So kids doing high school competitions are almost certainly past Algebra 1, and may be long past. My Mathcounts kids are all 8th graders (except DS) and they've all finished Algebra 1 already (including DS). I have three Geometry kids, one Precalculus and one Calculus.

That said, there are frequently very specific rules about who is and isn't eligible, based on age/ grade/ etc. and within those rules you're free to do what you see fit. We actually did skip DS up, but we did it for the science fair (where it was becoming ridiculous to keep him with agemates) and according to the MathCounts rules a sixth grader is a sixth grader is a sixth grader -- it would have been really questionable to keep him back for that, while simultaneously moving him up for other things. Would he do better with another year of maturity? Definitely. But we decided it was worth the risk.

Actually most competitions are open to any grades "up to __" -- like the AMC-8 and the AMC-10. There's no lower limit and no eligibility limit, so you can register as a 4th grader but participate just as fully as an 8th or 10th grader. I would probably start with that, so as not to make any permanent decisions before they're absolutely necessary. Really I think the only one that's terribly picky about it is Mathcounts... and once you've tried some of the others you'll have a better idea of how you should approach that one.

Just to clarify - by "eligibility limit" I meant that with Mathcounts if DS is a 6th grader this year, his eligibility gets cut off three years from now, even if I claimed he was held back during that time. Once you start MathCounts, you have a three year eligibility window and then you're done. With the AMC tests, you can start early and just keep doing them every year until you reach the end grade (8 for the AMC-8, 10 for the AMC-10, and they have age cutoffs to go with those), but they don't care that it could mean you've taken the AMC-8 six years in a row, just as long as the last one isn't too late.

The AMC or maybe it was the Jr Math Olympiad (on same website) had specific requirements about no kids that have taken more than 4 high school level classes and others. I would register using the official grade you call him in homeschool, even if he's doing above-level work in some subjects. While I don't homeschool, DS 11 is a 7th grader even though he's taking advanced math.