bmo1 advice

My recommendations for you would be:
1) Practice actually writing down your solutions as proofs. Its better not to underestimate how important it is, since even with fully correct thoughts and answer you could gain 3/10 marks instead of 10/10 just because you did not justify your thinking properly. It would be nice to give your proofs for proofreading to someone who has experience in Olympiads/ your maths teacher. Also be prepared that the solution would take a considerable time to write.
2) For geometry questions main things to know would be(all of them should have been studied at gcse I think, but still) - circle theorems, facts about inscribed, circumscribed circles, segment joining two midpoints = 1/2 of the opposite side and is parallel to it (proof by similar triangles), types of quadrilaterals and how to spot them (especially parallelograms), how in an isosceles triangle median = heigh = angle bisector (and conversely if 2 are equal, triangle is isosceles), doing double the median sometimes helps (creates parallelogram). But it is now enough just knowing them - the easier you can spot and use them, the better.
3) For number theory - divisibility principles (2,4, 8, 3, 9, 5) and how to combine them (11 might be useful, 7 exists but quite hard and unlikely to be needed)
4) For combinatorics - for many questions no theory needed (basically just thinking), be familiar with pigeonhole principle - but it's quite simple, and the idea to colour things (esp. chessboard colouring), be able to count permutations, permutations with repetitions etc (one of the A level topics)
5) Use the entire time even if you feel like have 0 ideas as to what else to try (It happened to me that after being stuck for 2 hours I suddenly got an idea that fully saved a Question)
6) Useful to take breaks just to relax and refresh the mind (eg. bathroom breaks) - the Olympiad is quite long. Personally I like to also look out of the window
7) Even if you didn't solve the question - still write the ideas you had, you might gain partial marks
I think that's mostly it = ) Fell free to ask any questions, good luck with the Olympiad!

I have qualified for bmo1 with a score of 115 in the SMC. I need some advice on the bmo1. I want to give myself the best chance of getting into bmo2 but I’m aware of how hard this is. I’m not very used to answering bmo questions as up to now ive mostly been doing SMC/MAT/TMUA. However I’m still getting roughly 2/6 questions correct in past papers and when i look at solutions for the other questions i understand them fully (however i would never have thought of these solutions).
Geometry questions are probably ones i struggle with most frequently although the last question always seems to be the hardest. I also have mocks coming up in the same week as the bmo1 so dont have much time.
I want to know what the best thing is that i can do now to improve the most as well as any general advice for the bmo (e.g. strategy, tricks, general approaches to questions). Is it worth looking at bmo2 papers? Anyone else been through a similar situation? Thank you for your help

Hi, how did the bmo1 go? =)