UKMT Challenge

My son has just started year 7. He is practising with pink kangaroo past papers (completed all junior jmc/kangaroo/Olympiad and IMC/grey kangaroo) right now and consistently getting points enough to qualify for Cayley Olympiad. We have asked school if he could be enrolled for IMC in January 2025 but school said no and that even not all year 9 are getting enrolled. Asked them to test his abilities but they are not willing to do that.

Is there any other way i.e. any other school would be more helpful to enrol him and let him to sit IMC?

Reply 1

mqb2766

Original post

by bropoka

My son has just started year 7. He is practising with pink kangaroo past papers (completed all junior jmc/kangaroo/Olympiad and IMC/grey kangaroo) right now and consistently getting points enough to qualify for Cayley Olympiad. We have asked school if he could be enrolled for IMC in January 2025 but school said no and that even not all year 9 are getting enrolled. Asked them to test his abilities but they are not willing to do that.
Is there any other way i.e. any other school would be more helpful to enrol him and let him to sit IMC?

Cant give you chapter and verse, but Id not push it too much with what must be your sons new school if theyre not willing. It would be good if they were willing, but theres always next year (possibly). Also, you cant do the higher intermediates olympiads (hamilton, maclaurin) early, so hed be doing cayley for 3 years. Cayley is a bit harder than jmo, but ...

If theyre not willing, you can do the papers anyway a couple of days late and while your son doesnt get a certificate etc, maybe give him some treat/reward. At the end of the day, its rocking up for a 1 hr (or 2 hrs for the olympiads) once a year and theres plenty more interesting stuff to do as well in the other 51 weeks. Gardiners alpha/beta/gamma books which have a good set of exercises for around his age, theres the ukmt mentoring sheets and singhs parallel and nrich and aops and ...

Reply 2

bropoka

Original post

by mqb2766

Cant give you chapter and verse, but Id not push it too much with what must be your sons new school if theyre not willing. It would be good if they were willing, but theres always next year (possibly). Also, you cant do the higher intermediates olympiads (hamilton, maclaurin) early, so hed be doing cayley for 3 years. Cayley is a bit harder than jmo, but ...
If theyre not willing, you can do the papers anyway a couple of days late and while your son doesnt get a certificate etc, maybe give him some treat/reward. At the end of the day, its rocking up for a 1 hr (or 2 hrs for the olympiads) once a year and theres plenty more interesting stuff to do as well in the other 51 weeks. Gardiners alpha/beta/gamma books which have a good set of exercises for around his age, theres the ukmt mentoring sheets and singhs parallel and nrich and aops and ...

Thank you for you reply.

We are okay with the preparation side of it. He has completed aops' prealgebra/algebra/number theory/combinatorics/geometry (imc is quite geometry heavy), he is doing Singh's parallel and he is awaiting results if he will get into Singh's new Euclid program. Done most of amc8/10 as well as ukmt past papers. He also knows Russian and there are loads of resources in russian when it comes to math Olympiads.

He really admires math and I am sure he will continue doing maths no matter what (I didn't tell him about school's decision yet) but it's just he really wanted to compete. He was literally counting days to 29th January 😒

Reply 3

mqb2766

Original post

by bropoka

Thank you for you reply.
We are okay with the preparation side of it. He has completed aops' prealgebra/algebra/number theory/combinatorics/geometry (imc is quite geometry heavy), he is doing Singh's parallel and he is awaiting results if he will get into Singh's new Euclid program. Done most of amc8/10 as well as ukmt past papers. He also knows Russian and there are loads of resources in russian when it comes to math Olympiads.
He really admires math and I am sure he will continue doing maths no matter what (I didn't tell him about school's decision yet) but it's just he really wanted to compete. He was literally counting days to 29th January 😒

If the school isnt willing, theres not much you can do unfortunately. The argument about not all year 9s doing it isnt that important as usually its only the top set or two, but if they dont want a year 7 to do it there isnt much you can do.

It sounds like hes done a lot and tbh thats more important than a challenge... A few things that could be on his todo list would be

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the ukmt mentoring sheets - theyre graded and usually a bit harder than the challenge questions and the sets range from about jmc level to bmo1/2 level.

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gardiners essence of maths (free https://www.openbookpublishers.com/books/10.11647/obp.0168) and he did a fair bit of stuff with ukmt before smith. It may be on the older side for him, but maybe not.

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a decent problem solving book like https://www.worldscientific.com/worldscibooks/10.1142/9478. Its readable and good hints.

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the liverpool maths do a feb 1/2 term challenge https://mathsmerseyside.org.uk/challenges, which is primarily for the region but it looks like its open. Similarly, depending on where you are the uni ran a local monthly maths club and my lad went along from y8.

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Theres some stuff on drfrost for intermediate and senior

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A decent/readable history book can spark an interest in topics not met yet and also put the stories behind the people / techniques into context.

For the ukmt challenges/olympiads, doing some geometry and counting stuff is good, especially the geometry as it is weighted towards that as you say. A decent "greek geometry" book which concentrates more on similar stuff, construction, ... can keep someone busy for a while and is relatively interesting ... Realise that all this doesnt sort out his problem, but if the school doesnt want to play ball, cant see a way round it. My lad was similar and the school was more amenable but its luck of the draw.

(edited 1 year ago)

Reply 4

Sommer2000

My son is in year 11 and sat his 3rd BMO 1 today. In year 7 his school entered him in the JMC only once he had qualified for the JMO they have entered him into the IMC and JMC in year 8 qualifying for olympiads in both. Then the IMC and SMC since year 9 . Once they realised what he could do they were very keen to support him . Maybe once your son has been successful in the JMO they will be more flexible.