Tips and Tricks for the AMC

VMT Officers
November 2021

1 Preparation before Test Day

The days leading up to the AMC are often times just as important as the test day itself. Here are
some tips and tricks for the days before the test:
• Get Some Sleep- This point isn’t just about getting sleep, it’s about taking care of your
body. In order for you to be thinking sharp during test day, you need to make sure your
body is healthy in the days before. (i.e. it’s not the time to start a new diet or pull several
allnighters).
• Take Practice Tests- This doesn’t mean taking every single AMC 10/12 found on AoPS.
2-3 practice tests are more than sufficient for you to refamiliarize yourself with the types of
problems and the time constraint found on the AMC. The following two points are some of
the main goals of taking practice tests.
• Know Your Score Range- Coming into the test, you should have a goal of some sort of
score (that is reasonable) and an idea of how many problems you need to solve to achieve
this goal. Of course, this is just a guideline, but having an idea of how many problems you
need will keep you on track during the test and help you find a balance between checking and
pushing forward.
• Know Your Time Range- Another big thing about taking practice tests is that you un-
derstand the time constraints better. You should have a general idea of how long the first 10
or 15 problems should take you for your desired pace. This will let you know whether or not
you need to speed up or if you can take some time to further check your work.
• Review Your Formulas- Generally, the AMC tries to shy away from problems that require
the use of high-level formulas. Regardless, knowing certain formulas will help speed you
up immensely. For example, with geometry, knowing your trig identities as well as other
geometric formulas (e.g. Stewart’s Theorem) is very helpful.

2 Day of the Test

Here are some things to make sure you have on the day of the test:
• Food/Water- Don’t starve yourself or die of dehydration. Try to have a water bottle and a
small snack with you just in case you feel thirsty/hungry.

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 • Pencils- Self Explanatory. You need a pencil for scratch work and to fill out the bullet points.
• Time- Show up to testing times promptly to get situated.
It’s a pretty short list... Moving On!

3 Test-Taking Strategies
Now the test has started! Here are some tips for those 75 minutes:
• Don’t Panic- This is the number one thing. Panicking is never good, you’ll just end up
thinking slower and making more careless errors. Simply try your best to move and try to
stop your internal dialogue from being a negative factor.
• Skipping is Allowed- If one of your subjects is significantly worse than another, feel free to
skip a question. Yes, the questions generally get harder as the test goes along but there are
always some problems that are out of place. Don’t feel bad skipping a question just because
it has an early number.

• Reread the question statements- This is one of the easiest ways to avoid silly mistakes.
Make sure that when they’re asking for the greatest something, don’t give them the least.
These careless errors are the worst, and just spending a few seconds rereading what the
question is asking for can save u a lot of pain later on.
• Keep your scratch paper organized- Doing this will allow you to look back at your
work to see if you made any small calculation errors. Furthermore for multi-step problems or
casework problems, you don’t want to do half the problem then be unable to find your work
for that section later on.
• Take Small Bubbling Breaks- This one isn’t for everyone, but I like to bubble only after
I’ve done a significant chunk of the problems and I feel stuck. Bubbling gives my brain a
quick 2-3 minute break while doing something productive before I go back to working on the
problems. Just remember to bubble before the test is over.
• Know your Time-If you have 30 minutes left to do 5 problems, don’t be scared of a bashier
solution. However, if you’re behind pace, maybe think an extra second before jumping into
that long, tedious, brute force solution.

• Make Educated Guesses- As a general rule of thumb, guess if you’ve eliminated 2 or 3

of the answer choices. When making a guess, try making some small plausible assumption
about part of the problem and see which of the answer choices matches up. Don’t spend too
much time on guessing, but know that sometimes it’s easy to eliminate certain options.

4 Conclusion
These are just some things that you can try, they may not work for everyone, but definitely can
help. Best of luck on the 2021-2022 AMCs.