BMO Prep

Hi - I’m in Year nine and I’d like to know how to prepare for the BMO. For the past three years I have been doing IMC’s and all three years I have gone to the Cayley - with scores of 28, 47 and 55. Now I am taking SMC and I got full marks but the BMO seems quite daunting to me. I understand that ingenuity is required but can someone expand on the prep sheet the UKMT gave me and provide a definitive list of things I need to know for topics like trig?

While there isnt a syllyabus as such, chapter 1 in the bmo1 books (old - Gardiner, new - Smith)
https://ukmt.org.uk/textbooks/2-a-mathematical-olympiad-primer-2nd-edition
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Mathematical-Olympiad-Primer-II/dp/1906001413/
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Mathematical-Olympiad-Handbook-Introduction-Publications/dp/0198501056
have a summary of the main stuff to learn, so roughly a syllabus. Similarly ,the drfrost reimann zeta slides
https://www.drfrostmaths.com/downloadables.php?noid=917
are decent. However, the main thing is usually how you get started on a problem and there is no substitute for practice, even if you concentrate on a set of q1s, then q2s, ... There isnt usually a great deal of trig on there, so as well as the solutions in the two previous books and the ones in the videos,
https://imogeometry.blogspot.com/p/british.html
is a good resource for different approaches to geometry bmo problems. Youve done Cayley for 3 years, have you practiced hamilton/maclaurin?

Nope - I was always too young so I never took them irl. I did have a look at them though and they were a little more difficult yet still achievable. Same as BMO 1 ig- I’m still kinda panicking rn tho.