Notice: The 2020 SMC takes place from July 10, 2020, to August 24, 2020. See the Ongoing page for more details.
The Summer Mathematics Competitions is an annual online math contest held during the summer for all aspiring math enthusiasts. Consisting of one computational and two proof tests, it is designed to emulate the difficulty and exam format of the American Mathematics Competition series.
The SMC strives to promote mathematical interest in students of all ages, but especially for those in high school, by providing a fun and fair competition experience. In order to help participants gain as much as possible, our competition follows these three guiding principles.
All SMC contests are and will always be free of cost to make sure that everyone is able to gain from these resources regardless of their socioeconomic status.
For both proof based contests, we return constructive feedback for every submitted solution so that contestants can improve their proof writing and overall solution composition.
At the end of SMC contests, we release rigorously detailed solutions so that everyone can learn from problems that they may not have solved.
Currently, the SMC hosts three competitions — the SIME, SJMO, and SMO — in each competition cycle.
The SIME is a computational exam similar to the AIME in difficulty and style, i.e. 15 questions in 3 hours. Similarly, the SJMO and SMO are rigorous, proof based exams meant to match the USAJMO and USAMO, respectively, in difficulty and style, i.e. containing 3 questions and 4.5 hours per day over the span of 2 days. However, unlike the official competition hierarchy, the SMC contests do not require invitational qualification and can be taken by anyone.
See here for more information about American contests.
The 2020 SMC will be held on the Art of Problem Solving Website through the Mock Contest Forum. Instructions for how to compete can be found here. In particular, SMC currently has long testing windows and SJMO and SMO disjoint, which we may not have in the following years.
However, in future years, we hope to become independent of the AoPS platform and be able to offer prizes to top scoring individuals. We will update this website with more details in the coming future.
Note: The SMC is not sponsored by the Mathematical Association of America or Art of Problem Solving.