AMC Academy’s Post

Transcript

So let's start with an introduction. So maybe start with an introduction on who you are, how you did on the AMC, which exam you took on your score and maybe. Maybe your favorite math topic? Umm, so I'm Rohan. I'm thirteen years old. I took the MC 10A and 10B, I got a 117 on the 10A and 1:11 on the 10 B, and my favorite topic is probably algebra. Nice. Umm. Thank you so much. I'm so I'm so excited to do this interview with you and let's get started with your math journey. So most of the times our students have a little bit of background with math before they take the Amcs and I think you're quite. On the younger side for teaching the AMC. So I'm interested in getting to know maybe when you started competitive app, how long you studied for, maybe what books you use, what programs you are enrolled in and basically your whole math competition journey prior to this AMC performance? I'm mostly started in around 5th to like 6th grade ish and I think I took the AMC 8 then. I don't really remember my score though. But yeah. And I studied like some of math, some of the math books, like I think I studied the algebra and geometry books by Richard. I forgot the last name like Rose or something. So that was quite helpful. I also have been enrolled in math elective like it's like in school. So like we take some math contest there and I've been doing it last year and this year as well. Alright, thank you so much and, and just for students who are watching this, what grade are you in currently? Uh, I'm in 8th grade. Nice. So it's been about three years, give or take, since you started on math competitions and you're already in 8th grade qualifying for Amy with honor roll. That's right. Yeah, great. Wow. Alright. So now let's move on to maybe your experience with AMC Academy. So when you enrolled, how long you were enrolled 4 prior to the competition? Your experience with the overall class format, the homework and things like that. So I think I enrolled in like. August or September, sometime around then, if I remember properly. I don't really remember exactly when, but yeah, I think the classes were pretty helpful. Like I learned a lot, especially with like, like the format of it. Like they taught us some stuff in the beginning and then after that, like you gave us some problems to practice at the end. And then we discussed those solutions. And then the homework was also quite helpful, like I, I tried to do. Goes on most weeks. Wow man I think it helped like further increase my knowledge on like the topic. Yeah. Thank you so much. Yeah, of course. And just to sort of jump off from that, I was wondering how like which topics you focused on throughout the course, so which topics were covered and. Maybe how you like, maybe the format of the classes, like how many students were in your class? Whether it was more of a lecture format or more conversational tone. Any any feedback? Like that, I think it was like both like a lecture and a conversational, which was quite nice. I think there were like around 5:00 to 6:00 kids in most classes, but sometimes some kids didn't show up. So like it was easier to communicate with like the teacher. I feel like the classes were like pretty good overall and. What was the other question? I think it was regarding the curriculum. So what topics? You were discussed over the the the three month duration that you took the course. We mostly did, I think counting and probability and number theory, I think those are the main ones we covered. Yeah. So a big advantage of our courses is that we allow students to sort of have a weigh in as to what topics they'd like to explore. Maybe they're weaker areas and we focus specifically on those. So I think your group was one of them that focused specifically on combinatorics and a little bit of number theory as well, which I think was. The overall. Most favored approach prior to the AMC. So yeah, that's that's great and I'm glad you found the course to be enjoyable and useful. All right, so now I'm wondering specifically for you what your pre contest preparation looked like. So by pre contest, I mean maybe two to three weeks prior to the contest and all the way up to maybe a day prior and how your preparation? Looked as you approached the contest date. So I was like revising mostly my weak areas. So I think I mostly weaken geometry. So I was trying to do more practice problems on those. Umm. I also tried to do past AMC's and past Amys. I think those were like quite helpful because they had like a mix of topics and the problems had like a similar difficulty and general theme to the problems that came on this year's MC. Right. Um, and. Relating to that, I was wondering if. You took maybe like, how about how many past exams did you take? Like from from which year range? Because many students think it's required to practice maybe the past like 20 years of competition. So all the way from 2000 to 2024. Which which we don't necessarily agree with. So I was wondering how many past contests you took before the AMC? Umm, I think, UM. I think I've done 2005 to 2024 and I've mostly done. Yeah, I've mostly done tennis. I think I've also done a few 10 bees as well. All right. So, um, probably around then in that case, 20 to 30 contests. Yeah, OK. Yeah, that's that's definitely on the higher end for most of our students. But I guess on the results do speak for themselves. And I was wondering maybe the day before the contest, were there any strategies that you used to maybe brush up on, like review the concepts and formulas, maybe getting a lot of sleep? Was there anything specific maybe right before the contest that you did? Um, right before the contest, I mean. I don't think I have anything specific. I just like tried to advise like all the material that I learned before, like a lot of the theorems relating to geometry like picks theorem, that kind of stuff. Some of those I think I, I keep forgetting about those. So those are like important to remember. So I tried to revise those before and I try to revise any of the previous AMC problems like I got wrong and see where it was my mistake. Sure, That's a great strategy. Reviewing past AMC problems that you haven't been able to solve or that you made a mistake on is a great strategy. All right. Umm, yeah. So we, we've already touched on this a little bit, but I was wondering if there was any useful strategy, specifically when you were taking the mock contest and when you were taking the live contest, that helped you overcome any challenges you might have had during the test. So some students experienced some difficulties because there were some misplaced problems, so some very difficult problems earlier on in the contest. And and some students struggle to sort of. Go beyond that because there were set on solving that problem specifically. So was there any strategies that you used during the exam that you found helpful? I feel like I'm, I used elimination for some of the questions, like which options weren't even possible. And the other strategy I used was like first finishing the questions that I felt I could do and then like circling the questions which like I wasn't really sure how to do do. And then I came back to those once I finished the other questions. Nice. Yeah, I think that's yeah, illumination to a great strategy. And I think even though we don't specifically go over test taking strategies in the group course quite yet, I think the type of problem solving that we did where we sort of gave you guys time to approach the problem on your own and then sort of bread crumbs hints. To allow you guys to approach the problems in a way that would be similar to the way that you would on a test on likely also. Helped out a lot of our students is the reason for such great results this year. So I was wondering if you had any advice. Advice now for students. And I think you have a unique perspective on this because you are in the eighth grade. And if you had any advice for balancing math competition preparation with school work? Umm, I feel like normally like I tried to get in all my schoolwork in the in like the first half of like like maybe like an hour or two, like from 3:30 to 55. So I'm like around that time I try to do all my school work and then later on in the day I tried to do like an hour or a day or something on math or maybe more sometimes. But I feel like the best. Strategy is like just don't like don't do too much math in one day, like balance it out evenly. I feel like that's helped a lot. For sure. Um, yeah, definitely. Doing a lot of math in one day can lead to burnout, so it's good to balance it out throughout the week. And I think that's great advice. Doing yeah, separating school work and extracurricular work can be really useful, especially when you're in the upgrading of obviously less time that you have to dedicate towards school work and just building off of that. I was wondering if you had any. Future goals are are very like specific future goals relating to math content. So are you looking maybe towards qualifying for USAMO, probably USA JMO in your case and any goals relating to Amy now that you've qualified for the exam? So I I want to try to get like at least like because I think last year's Amy I did like OK, but I think this year I want to improve like get like. Maybe say around like a seven or eight or more. Umm and I also in like future, maybe this like next year or something. I want to try to qualify for us, Jim. Yep, that's a great goal. I think qualifying in grade 9 is is a great goal. If you're able to qualify for Amy in the eighth grade, I think that's an indication that especially because of your on the younger side. I think you have more time, both the practice and likely improvement is going to be faster than you would see for older students. So I think that's definitely a reasonable goal for the ninth grade and. And yeah, I think giving your performance on this exam, you're definitely a very have a strong chance of achieving that. So now as we wrap up this interview, I was wondering if you had any final advice for students who are beginning their AMC journey. So maybe students who are younger, like you started in the 5th grade, and maybe if you could go back to the fifth grade and talk to yourself then and give any advice to them, what would it be? I feel like sometimes like when someone goes like too fast or something they like it's very hard to remember. Like in my case, I can't remember a lot of things when I don't spend like too much time on it. So I would say like try to do like a few things a day, like focus on those greatly related to math and then like the next day before starting new concepts, like try to revise the old concepts that you learned previous day. I think that's like a really useful thing that help. For sure. Well, thank you so much and I wish you the best of luck. And Amy, I hope you reach that 7 plus score that you're shooting for. And I wish you the best of luck in future years of AMC competitions. And thank you so much for being able to attend this sort of student spotlight that we're offering.