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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]As a note to those who think calc only counts in STEM...if your kid is aiming for PE/Hedge funds, take MV if you can in high school. Finance admissions adore the math whizzes. [/quote]

LOL

Absolutely no one in PE/Hedge funds thinks taking MV in high school makes you a math whiz. They are looking for USAJMO, USAMO and IMO. [/quote]

You mean those silly competitions patents like you pay for for bragging rights?[/quote]

LOL

If you make it to IMO, you are picking among HYPSM's and using the rest of T10s as safety. Silly competition indeed!!

[/quote]

For anyone interested in engineering, which was the OPs post, doing competition math with the goal of targeting top 10 is a complete waste of time because there’s little alignment with the math needed for those majors.

For a good understanding of science the time is better spend having a basic understanding of Multivariable, linear algebra and differential equations even at community college level because that will help tremendously in physics and chemistry.

If a math major, sure IMO will help, but that’s 6 students a year, even if you qualify for USAMO, it’s unlikely you’ll make it into top 10 colleges on the back of it alone, and to get to that level, competition math is your extracurricular starting from 6th grade if not earlier. That’s way too soon to lock in what a kid will do in the future.

That’s why math competition is a poor time investment. To be competitive, USAMO level you need to work hard 4-8 years. You can get the advanced math coursework, calculus to differential equations, in two years, and then you have time to do other things.[/quote]

Whether or not math competitions are a good ROI is kind of nuanced.  The amount of time needed to reach USAMO levels varies by student.  Some get there with a couple years of working maybe 7 hours per week on competition math.  Others grind 2-3 hours per day for many years and never manage to qualify for an olympiad.  If a kid is passionate about pure math and proof writing, then it's a fine ROI.  If they're so good that they can reach olympiad levels without too much time expenditure, it's a good ROI.  If neither of those apply, the kid should invest their time in some other STEM activity that they love.  Having your narrative be that you funneled inordinate amounts of time into competition math for somewhat middling results is not going to be especially compelling for T10 admissions officers.  [/quote]

The chances of qualifying to USAMO by practicing one hour a day over two years are zero. These kids usually qualify for AIME in middle school and start competition focused preparation way earlier than that. There’s a lot of math covered poorly in the regular curriculum like geometry or not covered at all like number theory. Not to mention that if you only qualify in 12th grade it won’t matter for college admissions. Many of these kids can’t take a heavy load of AP classes so their weighted GPA won’t be as impressive. Also, add to that the cheating scandals clouding the competition so you may be competing against contestants with an unfair advantage. Even then, maybe a third of USAMO qualifiers make it to a top tier school, the rest have second tier results.

So yeah, math competitions is a viable path for maybe 50-100 students out of the 7000 that take AIME, or the 100000 that take AMC.

Take multivariable and Statistics instead.[/quote]
Fair.  My kid almost made top 20% honors on usajmo as a 9th grader (got honorable mention) with only about an hour per day of practice, but he started competition math in 3rd grade.  The kids I know who’ve made USAMO, USAJMO, or USAPhO still have a full array of AP courses and a few non STEM extracurriculars, but they all started competition math pretty young.

I also know several kids who’ve spent a ton of time grinding for competition math, and have not even come close to qualifying for an Olympiad.  They would have been much better off doing something else with their time.  [/quote]

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