MAA AMC contest

[Anonymous]

Can we get Trump and Bessent and Peter Navarro in on this?

China disrupting the USA math talent pipeline should rev them up.

Make America Math Again! MAMA!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:In the age of AI and cheating, the best solution would be to emulate mathcounts and have a very limited number of highly vetted proctoring sites. Perhaps they should only have universities proctor these exams.

In the age of AI and cheating these competitions don’t matter much, there’s no coming back from it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:There are reports of poor proctoring at the places that allow the kids to take it on computers and kids using AI to answer questions. There is a wide amount of time when the test is offered so there are reports of people taking pictures of the tests and sending them out so kids can get the answers before the exam.

I know in the past few years that there were youtube videos with the test questions on them before the test. All this does is raise the test scores for the small group of people who cheat and make it harder for strong competitors who don’t cheat to make the cut off for AIME. I believe that AIME is given in a very controlled environment so once you are there cheating is harder.

Last eyar they lowered the needed score for AIME when they realized that there had been cheating, I see people suggesting that might happen this year as well. Most people were predicting far lower scores for the AMC10 then came out, like between a 93-96 for the A and even lower for the B. It was a hard test this year.

Most of the poor proctoring I have heard of is when people don't take the test at their school at the same time as all their classmates.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There are reports of poor proctoring at the places that allow the kids to take it on computers and kids using AI to answer questions. There is a wide amount of time when the test is offered so there are reports of people taking pictures of the tests and sending them out so kids can get the answers before the exam.

I know in the past few years that there were youtube videos with the test questions on them before the test. All this does is raise the test scores for the small group of people who cheat and make it harder for strong competitors who don’t cheat to make the cut off for AIME. I believe that AIME is given in a very controlled environment so once you are there cheating is harder.

Last eyar they lowered the needed score for AIME when they realized that there had been cheating, I see people suggesting that might happen this year as well. Most people were predicting far lower scores for the AMC10 then came out, like between a 93-96 for the A and even lower for the B. It was a hard test this year.

Most of the poor proctoring I have heard of is when people don't take the test at their school at the same time as all their classmates.

My kid took it at an off campus site, Carson didn't offer AMC10. His group took a paper test, no computers. It is doable and probably would help to reduce cheating.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Yep. It's cheating. My kid (who made olympiad last year and has always had DHR since 7th grade) got a 145.5 on the 12A and didn't make DHR. He's pissed. He knows 3 other kids who won awards at USAMO last year, including 1 who made MOP, and none of them had perfect scores. Yet apparently 300 random kids did.

MAA is dumb enough that they're giving the problems to China a week early and they're not using a lockdown browser to administer the tests.

The DHR isn’t even an honor roll anymore since the 2023 system overhaul. AIME and USAMO are much more important, so the very top performers can jahrugnoff the AMC.

The real victims are the kids who would have qualified and done well on the AIME, but don’t get a chance. From what I saw, there are probably are non-speedy talented students who could score a 9 or 10 on AIME, potentially JMO qualifying, but miss it because they didn’t qualify for AIME. Even scoring 7 or 8 on AIME is a big achievement, tainted and robbed from students who don’t even get the chance to sit for the computer scored test.

My kid who is pissed about not making DHR is also running his school's math club. There were about 4 kids in his club that he expected to make AIME. None of them did. He's worried that they'll all get discouraged and quit the math club. Usually, his school has around 5 AIME qualifiers. This year, it's just my kid. He's really bummed.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Yep. It's cheating. My kid (who made olympiad last year and has always had DHR since 7th grade) got a 145.5 on the 12A and didn't make DHR. He's pissed. He knows 3 other kids who won awards at USAMO last year, including 1 who made MOP, and none of them had perfect scores. Yet apparently 300 random kids did.

MAA is dumb enough that they're giving the problems to China a week early and they're not using a lockdown browser to administer the tests.

The DHR isn’t even an honor roll anymore since the 2023 system overhaul. AIME and USAMO are much more important, so the very top performers can jahrugnoff the AMC.

The real victims are the kids who would have qualified and done well on the AIME, but don’t get a chance. From what I saw, there are probably are non-speedy talented students who could score a 9 or 10 on AIME, potentially JMO qualifying, but miss it because they didn’t qualify for AIME. Even scoring 7 or 8 on AIME is a big achievement, tainted and robbed from students who don’t even get the chance to sit for the computer scored test.

My kid who is pissed about not making DHR is also running his school's math club. There were about 4 kids in his club that he expected to make AIME. None of them did. He's worried that they'll all get discouraged and quit the math club. Usually, his school has around 5 AIME qualifiers. This year, it's just my kid. He's really bummed.

There are so, so many other math contests, that are more fun and interesting than AMC.

Half of students who take AIME sit for 3 hours and only solve 0-6 of the easier questions. It's really for the best to have the cutoff a bit higher.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Yep. It's cheating. My kid (who made olympiad last year and has always had DHR since 7th grade) got a 145.5 on the 12A and didn't make DHR. He's pissed. He knows 3 other kids who won awards at USAMO last year, including 1 who made MOP, and none of them had perfect scores. Yet apparently 300 random kids did.

MAA is dumb enough that they're giving the problems to China a week early and they're not using a lockdown browser to administer the tests.

The DHR isn’t even an honor roll anymore since the 2023 system overhaul. AIME and USAMO are much more important, so the very top performers can jahrugnoff the AMC.

The real victims are the kids who would have qualified and done well on the AIME, but don’t get a chance. From what I saw, there are probably are non-speedy talented students who could score a 9 or 10 on AIME, potentially JMO qualifying, but miss it because they didn’t qualify for AIME. Even scoring 7 or 8 on AIME is a big achievement, tainted and robbed from students who don’t even get the chance to sit for the computer scored test.

My kid who is pissed about not making DHR is also running his school's math club. There were about 4 kids in his club that he expected to make AIME. None of them did. He's worried that they'll all get discouraged and quit the math club. Usually, his school has around 5 AIME qualifiers. This year, it's just my kid. He's really bummed.

There are so, so many other math contests, that are more fun and interesting than AMC.

Half of students who take AIME sit for 3 hours and only solve 0-6 of the easier questions. It's really for the best to have the cutoff a bit higher.

True, but cost and accessibility are a major factor.

[Anonymous]

IMC, through RSM, is challenging and not that expensive. My kid loves it. I think the draw for the AMCs is that they have steps so you can move from the base test, to AIME, to USMO and above. There are not many competitions like that. I almost wish that they made the kids with perfect scores retake a new exam at the same time to see if the scores were legitimate or not. A few kids who earned legitimate perfect scores would be inconvenienced but the others would be exposed. Do that a few years in a row and see what happens.