Advice for Maths Olympiads

For Anyone that has qualified for BMO1/BMO2 or the IMOK Olympiads, what kinds of resources did you use, how much did you prepare before hand (as in how many past papers did you do), and what sorts of scores do you usually get, given the amount of prep that you do. Thanks!

Reply 1

mqb2766

Original post by Studybro

Its kind of how long is a bit of string, and preparing for imo is a fair bit harder than bmo2 which is harder than bmo1 (anecdotally). So it would help to have some idea of what youve already done/if youve tried any bmo1 questions etc.

But for resources (bmo1) there are the 2 ukmt books of recent past questions by smith and the older book by gardiner. The gardiner one has a decent maths summary chapter at the start and there are generally a few answers for each question as there is generally a few different, valid ways of answering a question. Personally, reflecting on the different ways (after youve done/attempted the question) is the main benefit. Not looked over the smith ones, but Id imagine theyre similar, just more recent questions. The drfrost slides are decent (enrichment-zeta section) and theyre a mix of smc/bmo1 and mat/step a bit. imogeometry has a section devoted to past bmo1 geometry problems/solutions and its good. Theres also (obviously) the official bmo site with past papers and there are a reasonble number of other solutions onlne by different people. For bmo2/imo youd need more books about the maths, as bmo1 doesnt really need much new maths, its more about harder problems - and a good problem solving approach is the key thing.

How many past papers? With a bit of building up to it by trying the easy questions first, then some harder ones, then the hard ones and some decent reflection about the solutions Id have thought maybe a ~dozen papers to get competent (whatever that is).