Intermediate Mathematical Challenge 2016

Hi guys I'm in year 10 and I am doing the IMC in 2016. I would like to get an Olympiad qualifier, or a Gold at least. Apart from doing past papers, how are you revising, or how will you revise? What methods can I use throughout revision in order to improve my score significantly? Thanks

Reply 1

Lemur14

Volunteer Section Leader

In year 9 I was a kangaroo qualifier (and I got a merit for that). We're always told that the younger years do better as they don't overthink the questions so watch out for that. I didn't do any revision at all for it as in our school it's very informal and just for 'fun' for the top maths set in each year. I don't think there really is any other way to revise other than past papers as it is such a one of a kind paper but other word problem solving questions might help to an extent as a fair amount of the question is just interpreting it correctly. There always seems to be some sort of complicated area of a shape you don't normally have to calculate area of so try to know lots of different shape's area formula. tbh though in year 10, it should be more about the GCSE work than the maths challenge and also, expect the year 9s to do better. In our year 2 year 9s qualified and 3 year 10s and no year 11s (tbf the year 11s all intentionally failed as rebellion against the teachers who made them miss their last English coursework hour) but the year 9s were better than the year 10s by a fair number of marks.
HTH

thanks

I was also a Kangaroo qualifier in Year 10 and all I did was past papers :smile:

There isn't much else you can do, just go over formulas and basic maths e.g. long multiplication, basic algebra
Remember you don't even have to do the hardest questions (21-25) to get a Gold, so you can just work on getting all the easier questions right, and try the harder ones if you want to.

Reply 4

Treblebee

Original post by nph

I was also a Kangaroo qualifier in Year 10 and all I did was past papers :smile:

Yep, excellent advice :smile:

I also qualified for the Kangaroo (in Yr 9), and all I did was practice past papers. Just another tip - only do the later questions if you're pretty sure that you're right, because you can lose marks from them. With part B it's technically worth it (5 qs, and you get 6 marks for a correct ans, with -1 for an incorrect one) to guess, but that just ruins the fun of it all - because it is, tbh, just a bit of fun :smile:

Also, it's possibly too late now, but another thing which helps is if you often do challenging probs outside of school - it doesn't matter what the prob, or what the level, as long as it's challenging; that's all that counts. Even if you get them all wrong, research shows that it helps you a lot more than something like private tuition, so give them a bash! Good luck :smile:

(edited 8 years ago)

Reply 5

ben167

thank you! i will apply this when preparing!