US Ersatz Math Olympiad
The US Ersatz Math Olympiad is a proof-based competition open to all middle and high school students. Like many competitions, its goals are to develop interest and ability in mathematics (rather than measure it). However, it is one of few proof-based contests open to all middle and high school students.
The USEMO is hosted on the Art of Problem-Solving website. This contest is not sponsored by the Math Association of America (which runs the USAMO).
The difficulty of the contest is intended to be similar to IMO. As part of the learning experience, we aim to provide feedback (rather than just score) to participants. You can read the full USEMO mission statement to get a better sense for the goals of the competition.
The USEMO is largely run on an honor system, although we may offer prizes. Please check the full rules and procedures.
USEMO 2026#
USEMO 2026 will be the first USEMO directed by Anant Mudgal. Note the new email address $\text{usersatzmo}@\text{gmail}.\text{com}$ for contact.
Problem proposals for USEMO 2026 are open. They are due 31 May 2026.
The organizers of the USEMO are grateful to be sponsored in 2025 by the CoRe Lab, Institute of Artificial Intelligence, Peking University.
Contact#
The director of the USEMO is Anant Mudgal starting in 2026. The email address for USEMO-related stuff is $\text{usersatzmo}@\text{gmail}.\text{com}$.
Links and downloads#
- Registration and submission portal
- Answer sheet template
- Full rules and procedures
- Mission statement
- Problem proposal guidelines (for authors)
Archive#
- USEMO 2019 (problems) (solutions and results)
- USEMO 2020 (problems) (solutions and results)
- USEMO 2021 (problems) (solutions and results)
- USEMO 2022 (problems) (solutions and results)
- USEMO 2023 (problems) (solutions and results)
- USEMO 2024 (problems) (solutions and results)
- USEMO 2025 (problems) (solutions and results)
Hall of Fame#
This is a listing of the Top 3 scorers on each USEMO. Further results can be found at the links above. The list below is sorted alphabetically by first name (not by place).
- USEMO 2019: Jaedon Whyte, Jeffrey Kwan, Luke Robitaille
- USEMO 2020: Ankit Bisain, Gopal Goel, Noah Walsh
- USEMO 2021: Eric Shen, Kristie Sue, Ram Goel (with Raymond Feng tying third place)
- USEMO 2022: JunWen Huang, Krishna Pothapragada, Maximus Lu
- USEMO 2023: Hannah Fox, Henrick Rabinovitz, Linus Tang
- USEMO 2024: Alexander Wang, Feodor Yevtushenko, Oron Wang
- USEMO 2025: Darsh Patel, Jiahe Liu, Royce Yao
Volunteer#
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Grading: this is by far the main bottleneck. If you have any capability to read through some submissions, please help! While you need experience reading mathematical proofs to fulfill this role, you do NOT need past competition experience. We will provide marking schemes, and pair up experienced graders with newer ones. You can read more info about the grading here; see also the advice for problem captains.
Signups for grading 2026 will open later. -
Problem proposals: we welcome proposals from anyone, although preference is given to proposals from those who have completed high school. See the problem proposal guidelines. For USEMO 2026, the deadline for submissions is 31 May 2026.
Please contact the directors for further details on these, or if you have other ideas on how you could help out.