Welcome to the first post on the new BMT blog, a new initiative started by our outreach team! We’re excited to have another avenue towards creating an open and welcoming community of people who enjoy mathematics.
We hope to post some helpful tips and resources for students who are interested in math competitions, and make it easier for those who are interested to become acclimated to the experience. If you are a coach, parent, or math educator, this should help you with guiding your students towards success.
For our first post today we’ll highlight some advice about how to prepare for and approach BmMT and math competitions in general. We discussed similar content at our BmMT Q&A earlier this month, so this might sound familiar if you were there or checked out the slides :)
1. Find a way to make preparing fun, and don’t study alone!
One of the most common roadblocks to preparing for math competitions is that it can get lonely and tedious sometimes. Find a friend (or a group with similar skill levels) who enjoy doing math problems, and use the group environment to encourage each other’s progress!
Preparing with your team is key, especially for competitions like BmMT, where three out of the four rounds are team based rounds. Understanding your team's strengths and weaknesses will help you know when to team up and collaborate, and when to divide-and-conquer. Set up a few times to meet with your team and go through some past BmMT rounds together. You’ll feel much more prepared and be more ready to work together cohesively.
2. Know what to expect.
Don’t attend your first math tournament without a good idea of what to expect. This goes beyond practicing for the problems you’ll see.
First, we recommend being comfortable with the format of the competition. For us, this means going through our archive. Study what each different part of the competition entails, how it’s structured, etc. Even though the BmMT puzzle topic changes year to year, it is nice to take the puzzle round from a previous year so then you learn how to read the instructions! For the BmMT puzzle round, competitors will have 15 minutes to read the instructions, which explain the rules of the puzzle, before the 60 minutes to actually solve the problems.
Most math competitions generally cover four main topics: algebra, geometry, number theory, and combinatorics/probability. We know all of these aren’t in your standard middle school curriculum, so be prepared for that. Some great free resources exist on the web, like the Art of Problem Solving Wiki!
3. Practice, practice, practice…
It’s important to practice effectively, so here’s a few tips on how to do that. We already talked about practicing with your team, but we’ll say it again because it’s that important! The practice tests will be the most helpful to you if you actually attempt to solve the questions before looking at the solutions. The solutions are more valuable once you’ve actually tried the problem — you can compare the solution’s approach to the problem to your approach, and note what you did or didn’t notice about the problem. Just reading the solutions without trying the problem will not be as helpful, and you won’t get the experience of thinking about each question without the knowledge of the solution. Some of the problems are hard and you’ll probably get stuck, but finally getting the breakthrough and figuring everything out is part of the fun of it.
There are different opinions about how to actually go through the practice tests, so you’ll have to see what’s best for you and your team. It might be helpful to take the tests as if you’re really in the competition setting, i.e. timing yourself. However, this might add stress to the study experience, so it might be preferable for you to put the timer away. Work with your friends, giving yourselves a while to look at each problem. It’ll be easier to process the information and skills you’re learning if you aren’t switching from problem to problem constantly.
4. Set realistic goals.
You should also set reasonable expectations and goals whenever you go to a math contest. The average scores on BmMT exams are usually less than 50%. Lots of students who take our tests are used to doing well on their school exams, and earning almost perfect scores. You shouldn’t expect to get the same kinds of results that you get at school. The exams are harder, and it’s our goal to teach or show you something new.
You should be proud when you get any question right, and the questions you get wrong should be seen as an opportunity to learn, not in any way a mark against your problem solving skills. Solving even a few of the questions is an accomplishment and should make you feel proud and satisfied. So, beyond just looking at your score at the end of the day, you should focus on how you improved your problem solving skills, learned something new, and had fun with your team.
5. Have fun!!
Our goal is not just to make you take a bunch of tests, but to create a space for students who are passionate about mathematics. We hope you enjoy spending time with your team, going to the activities, and making new friends from other teams.
Hopefully this post helps give you some ideas about how to get started with preparing for BmMT. We hope to see you at BmMT 2025 in a few months, or at a future event!
Best,
Your friends at BMT
