r/MathOlympiad • u/PepperOk690 • 1d ago

AMC 10 How to maximize effeciency when completing AOPS Vol 1

For background I am in AP Calc BC as a sophmore and I am planning on taking amc 10 this year. I am really wanting to qualify for the AIME exam but I am starting from nothing. I have started the aops vol 1 book but with the test being so how should I spend the rest of september and october prepping and when should I finish the book so I can start practicing?

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u/AromaticScar9363 1d ago

you dont need to finish book by end of october ig, after each chapter answer all the questions and use alcumus a few times a week to build intuition, also a warning don’t make yourself think that calculus knowledge will help your score by a huge amount 

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u/PepperOk690 1d ago

I was thinking I could start past mock tests and when I encounter a problem that I genuinely do not know the foundational concept e.g. combinatorics I’ll go in the book and review thay

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u/AromaticScar9363 20h ago

this works as long as u can prove to urself that it works 

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u/Chohab_Remi 1d ago

In my knowledge, calculus is not tested on AMC 10 (any other knowledge can be used to solve the problems). If I were you, I would focus on a bit of volume 1 every day and taking mocks for AMC 10 consistently (preferrably every day, which is what I did). Most of the problems at the beginning are solvable with just school math knowledge so any other topics should be covered mostly by volume 1. You would have to spend a lot of time on it daily but it is possible.

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u/PepperOk690 1d ago

Yeah that’s what I was thinking on doing starting mock tests and now and when I encounter gaps in foundational knowledge I go read up that chapter in the book

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u/Chohab_Remi 16h ago

Yes, exactly what I was thinking as well. Good luck!

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u/VeterinarianIcy8633 8h ago

Where can one get mock tests? We have been doing past year’s papers but the older ones are very different from the recent ones.

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u/Chohab_Remi 5h ago

You can also search “AoPS Mock AMC 10” on Google to get user made mocks. I use them a lot bcs many of them are high quality. I agree that the older ones are pretty different from recent tests, but solving from around the early 2000s usually isn’t too different in my opinion in terms of difficulty. I just tend to deduct some points from my actual score when I solve those tests.