Math Competitions
My favorite subject to tutor is math competitions. Growing up, I participated in numerous local and national math competitions between elementary school and my last year in college. These include:- The Continental Math League
- MathCounts
- GPML
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ARML
- USAMTS
- UNL Math Day
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The AMC
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The Putnam Exam
- The Missouri Collegiate Mathematics Competition
- Other smaller local competitions.
To cite a few examples, I scored a 136 on the AMC 12 and solved 8 problems on the AIME during my senior year of high school, I received scores of 100 on the USAMTS during my junior and senior years, and I was the Nebraska ARML team individual high scorer during my senior year.
Besides my experience practicing for, reading books about, and participating in competitions, I also received a semester of private lessons in math competition problem-solving from Arkadiy Skopenkov, who has helped to train the Russian International Mathematical Olympiad team and leads many of the math competitions activities that take place in the greater Moscow area. In addition to my experience described on my experience page, I have recently helped to prepare multiple students for the AMC 12/AIME.
I have developed a number of teaching/problem-solving techniques tailored specifically towards helping students master math competitions. These techniques include general problem-solving strategies, as well as strategies related to analyzing the psychology of the test writers to gain insights into the problems. In fact, a number of the problem-solving techniques that I teach to all of my students have originated from my experience with competitions.
I would like to attract enough interest to start a comprehensive and affordable semester-long course in math competitions for high school students. I believe that this course can be both very effective in raising scores and very enjoyable to the students. If this sounds like something that you might be interested in, please let me know!