Why mathleague.org?

Why participate in mathleague.org contests?

• Online testing opportunities. We were the first math contest in the world to deploy a fully online live math contest system in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic of 2020, and we are continually working to ensure that we remain the world leader in designing and implementing online contests. Considering the tremendous opportunities our online testing platform has opened up for students who are in locations too remote to attend traditional in-person contests, we are committed to continue offering online testing along with our in-person contests. Please note that some of the social interaction features listed below may not fully apply to online contests, but rest assured our online contests remain a fun and social experience due to the fact that, unlike most online contests, we run the contests live in an online meeting room where students are given opportunities to chat and interact with each other.
• Commitment to our students. Respect for our students forms the cornerstone of everything we do at mathleague.org. We established a Code of Conduct that places particular emphasis on protecting students' rights and clarifying expectations so that students cannot be arbitrarily disqualified or excluded from participation without due process. Because we recognize the tremendous value many cultures place on names, we encourage students to sign up for our contests using their real names in the writing script that is most relevant to them, and we include a registration field for students to assist us in learning how to pronounce their names. We also ensure that every student is allowed to participate in our contest; you do not need permission from your school, your government, or anyone else other than your parents in order to participate in our contests. Finally, we are committed to offering an opportunity to qualify for a State or National Championship to all students in grades 3 through 12, and we are committed to holding a State or National Championship for every student who qualifies for one. This was particularly relevant in 2020 when literally every other major math contest in the US shut down and we were the ONLY US contest to offer a National Championship at any age level.
• Commitment to mathematical integrity. We have a team of over a dozen staff members dedicated to writing a brand new set of test questions each month, assembling them into complete tests, and editing the finished product. Every question is reviewed by several people to ensure that the math we present is at the highest possible standard with no errors, ambiguities, or inconsistencies. Not only does this allow us to produce more accurate tests than many other contests, but we are also committed to correcting mistakes in our materials and mistakes in scoring when we discover them.
• Educational value. We go well beyond the traditional curriculum. Even very young students are exposed to broad concepts from number theory, statistics, probability, combinatorics, algebra, geometry, and other branches of mathematics. Further, our tests do not encourage rote memorization but rather reward the application of problem-solving strategies. Each competition has at least one team round, where students can work together and share ideas and techniques. We believe that students learn and retain a great deal when they solve challenging questions rather than just repeating memorized facts. Our tests emphasize creative and critical thinking, applied reasoning, and problem solving. Not only are our tests a worthwhile challenge on their own, but they are also excellent preparation for MATHCOUNTS, AMC, ARML, and other challenging competitions.
• Fun social opportunities. Unlike some contests where you take a test in your own school and mail in the papers, our contests gather participants in one place so they can meet other students in the area who love math! This is also a great chance for parents and coaches to network. Even our online contests have social opportunities for students to interact with each other.
• Prompt results. If you're tired of doing mail-in contests and then waiting several weeks for results, try us! At most of our contests, if you win an award, you will get public recognition, in front of your peers, the same day. You might even be able to look up complete results online before you leave the building or post a picture of yourself receiving a trophy less than an hour after the last round of testing is over.
• Helpful feedback. Because we believe each contest should be a learning experience, we release packets (containing student answer sheets, a copy of the test questions, and even a copy of the solutions guide) to each school after the contest. We encourage students to review their tests after the contest is over, and sometimes students are so eager to look through their tests that it can be hard to get them to stop analyzing the questions long enough to collect their trophies! We also have a feature in our results section where students can download a score report that indicates what score they got on each test and which questions they answered correctly and incorrectly.
• Accessible formats. We have something for everyone. Within each competition, some rounds allow calculators while others don't. Some tests are written for individuals while others are designed for teams. All rounds contain easier questions as well as very challenging questions, so students of all ability levels should find something to work on. Everyone can participate and gain the satisfaction of answering questions, but the top students will find themselves quite challenged by the later problems. Scoring is structured in a way that makes sense and balances the various test components.
• Appropriate challenges. In a normal math class, an exceptionally gifted student and a profoundly gifted student would likely both get an A+ and appear to be equally proficient, meaning that the teacher would not have adequate information to challenge them or help them improve. At a mathleague.org contest, we strive to ensure there are enough difficult problems that everyone gets at least a few questions wrong. In this way the hardest problems distinguish the top students' abilities and give them all something new to work on. What a great way to challenge, motivate, and educate everyone, at all levels!
• Inclusive policies. Although most of our contestants are part of teams sponsored by public or private schools, our tournaments are also open to individual students and cooperative homeschool programs. You can join a team from your school, or organize a team of several other homeschooled kids in your city. As a last resort, you can even attend by yourself if your school is not supportive of math contests. We want to make sure anyone who wants to can compete at our contests! Further, we have no minimum age restrictions. A 7th-grader may choose to register for a high school contest, for instance. (There are maximum age limits, though; for example, a 7th-grader may not compete at an elementary contest, for obvious reasons.) We hold contests appropriate for everyone from 3rd through 12th grades.
• Advanced technology. From start to finish, our contests use technology to automate many aspects of our operations. This not only saves time, but it also minimizes the possibility of human error. Visitors to our website can register for membership, join our mailing list, sign up to host a contest, search for and submit an entry form for upcoming contests, or view results from completed contests. We also have the most advanced math contest grading system in the world (see below), as well as an automated mechanism to announce new contests, grading opportunities, and results as they become available.
• Robust grading. Our grading system is fast, accurate, and anonymous. Most of our grading is done entirely online. All answer sheets are scanned into the computer, and our special in-house program extracts images of each answer. Volunteer graders, using smartphones, see only images of the answers; the computer tracks but conceals the identity of the students. Every answer is viewed by at least three different people, and discrepancies are flagged for even more scrutiny. Try it out sometime so you can see the difference; just watch for the announcements on our Twitter feed! Anyone with an internet-capable device can help to grade--even the students themselves, after the last test ends. It's surprisingly fun.
• Transparent data. At most contests we scan all the student answer sheets before returning them, so it is easy for our staff to investigate possible grading mistakes. True grading errors happen rarely, but if you believe there was a problem, please let us know! Some contests lack a way to remedy scoring discrepancies, but we believe in being transparent and accountable to our constituents. We also post our results online so everyone can help us ensure that we have the most accurate data of any math contest in the world.
• Worldwide consistency. All of our contests at a given level (elementary, middle, high school) have the same format worldwide, and the same questions are administered in multiple cities for each test release, so students get the same mathleague.org test experience regardless of where they compete. Posting our results online also allows participants to compare the scores across test sites.
• Reliable and meaningful results. While our tests are designed so that all students will find problems they can solve, we are one of a select few contests that write enough difficult questions to adequately distinguish the top students not only in a given country but in the entire world. As you prepare for our contests, please remember that unlike other contests you may have participated in, our contest *will* contain problems you cannot solve in the allotted time, but the good news is that participants receive a copy of all tests they take with full solutions.
• Tiered competition. At all grade levels we offer students the opportunity to advance to further rounds of competition, often culminating in a State, Provincial, or National Championship. Many of our rules for advancement are designed to allow students to advance to the next round of competition based on their absolute score rather than by their rank at the competition. This allows a greater number of highly-deserving students to advance from particularly competitive regions.
• Ongoing expansion. We are growing quickly and are eager to move into new areas. If we don't currently hold contests in your area, get in touch with us so we can work together to set up a competition. If you would like to see a State, Provincial, or National Championship where you live, we would like to help make that happen. In 2014 we established the first-ever National Championship for elementary students in the United States. We are currently working on establishing National Championships in countries around the world, and we are looking to expand our reach into any areas where there is sufficient interest.

Why host a mathleague.org contest?

• Foster those intangible "aha!" moments teachers live for. One of the real joys of teaching is watching students succeed and fall in love with learning. Our contests offer students a chance to grapple with difficult questions, make insightful breakthroughs, and emerge victorious with either a prize or, more importantly, a passion for math.
• Give back to your community. Sometimes high school math teams host elementary or middle school contests to provide opportunities to the younger students in their area.
• Obtain free registrations for your students. We offer a certain number of free registrations to the host school in exchange for letting us use their facilities.
• Outsource headaches. Every math contest has a few bumps, but with one of our experienced staff members on site, such things are minimized. Our representative will handle printing the tests, running the registration desk, administering the grading process, and conducting the awards ceremony.
• Build a local math community. You will not only meet other teachers and coaches in the area, but you will help your students meet other mathematically-inclined children.
• Practice for other competitions. If you're wondering how an upcoming MATHCOUNTS chapter contest will go, why not hold a dress rehearsal? Your students will gain valuable experience, and you will also be able to gauge the level of competition to expect from other schools in the area.
• Recruit potential students. Hosting a competition allows bright students in the area to view your program. If you belong to a charter, private, or magnet school, perhaps they'll submit an application. Of course, if your institution is a college or university, you can advertise your institution to the students as well.
• Sell concessions. This could generate a little revenue that will allow your math team to travel to other contests.

Why partner with mathleague.org?

• Exclusive access to hosting opportunities in your region. As a partner, you are responsible for ensuring that students in your region have access to as many testing opportunities as possible, and we give you the chance to conduct these contests without interference from third parties in your region.
• Quality questions. We take care of writing the contest questions so you don't have to. We have a group of highly skilled and well-trained question writers who are students or alumni of prestigious institutions such as MIT, Stanford, Carnegie Mellon, and others. Our team employs a rigorous vetting process for test questions and puts each question through several layers of editing, not just for content but also for context, accessibility, and appropriateness.
• Membership in a larger network. When you run our contests in your region, your students are part of a worldwide movement and will be able to compare their scores to students all around the world. In addition, top scoring students will have the opportunity to compete at National and/or International Championships.
• Our experience and expertise. When you partner with us, you benefit from our position as the world leader in math contest innovation throughout the 21st Century. We were the first math contest to implement digital grading, an anonymous and distributed platform that allows graders to grade test items on their phone or tablet. We were the first math contest to organize a National Championship for elementary school students in the United States. And we were the first math contest to develop a fully online live contest system during the pandemic of 2020, which allowed us to continue our contests uninterrupted and run the *only* National Championships in the US that year.
• Our reputation as fierce advocates for social justice and students' rights. We were the first math contest to develop a code of conduct with explicit protection for student due process; this document is like a "Bill of Rights" that protects students from being unfairly penalized for issues that arise at a contest. We were the first math contest to incorporate a written set of diversity and sensitivity standards into our question writing - have you seen questions that use "stars and stripes" instead of "stars and bars"? We started that. We have enthusiastically reached out to disadvantaged communities to encourage them to participate in contests - we offer free contest registrations to every school in Africa and every Title I school in the US, and we work with our prize-winning students to give them opportunities to donate contest entries to students in Africa.
• Our unique combination of math and business skills. There are a lot of math contests that suffer from a lack of business experience and are ill-equipped to design sustainable programs, marketing campaigns, and customer service policies. On the other hand, there are a lot of math contests that are well-run businesses but don't seem to prioritize math content the way we feel a contest should. We have dedicated teams committed to delivering the highest quality math tests as described above as well as delivering 24/7 customer service and keeping the organization running as a viable and sustainable business entity. Our Customer Care and Operations teams work hard to keep our participants happy while refusing to comprise on mathematical integrity or test security.
• A chance to form a partnership that is more than the sum of its parts. We have the mathematical expertise, policy experience, and solid infrastructure to lend instant credibility to the contests you run in your region. You have the ability to reach students, parents, and teachers in your state or country that we could never find without your help. Together we can create a math contest in your area that is better than either of us could do without the other.

Why donate to mathleague.org?

Our curriculum goes far beyond what is taught in most schools, and our tests offer appropriate challenges to students of all levels. We never have a problem with supremely smart kids getting bored the way they might in class because they "know all the answers already". We are proud of this program and all the students it has helped over the last two decades. You contribution could help us accomplish even more. With increased funding, we could:

• Expand into underrepresented areas. We are actively engaged in expanding into less populated states in the US and into Africa, and additional funding could help us reach students more quickly in areas where it would otherwise not be economically viable to do so.
• Run more contests. In some cities, we run as many as six contests per school year at a given level. We would love to do that in more cities, or perhaps even increase that number! To do that, we would need to hire more test writers and staff to prepare the tests and run the contests.
• Run larger contests. Too often we are forced to turn away registrants because there is simply not enough room in a middle school cafeteria to seat everyone. If we could rent larger venues, we could accommodate more students.
• Give out more awards. Most of our sites give prizes to the winners in each grade level. With a larger budget we could offer more substantial awards and possibly even scholarships to more winners at our State or National Championships.
• Keep prices low. From time to time we have been forced to raise registration fees to keep up with inflation and our costs. We never want students to be priced out of a chance to learn and we hope to minimize further rate increases. With enough funding, it may even be possible to offer students free registration to certain contests.
• Raise the profile of our contests and our students. With an increased budget to promote community outreach, we could devote additional staff resources to developing marketing and publicity materials. Our goal is to raise the level of public consciousness about math contests so that not only do our outstanding students get more recognition, but also more people recognize the value of succeeding at mathematics.
• Improve our technology. We run what we believe is the most technologically advanced math contest in the world, because we are always looking for new ideas to innovate. With an increased tech budget, we could hire staff to help keep our website and grading system at the cutting edge of technology. Our current goals include video tutorials, further automation of the contest registration process, and interactive access to test questions.
• Improve customer service. Due to our rapid growth, we receive a great deal of correspondence. Hiring additional staff could help us answer email more promptly.

Our mission has always been to help gifted students develop their talent for mathematics. It is a rewarding endeavor. Please consider becoming part of this effort; by contacting us at customercare@mathleague.org to arrange a donation or sponsorship, you will benefit not only the children of today but also the problem solvers of tomorrow.