The US Ersatz Math Olympiad is a proof-based competition open to all US 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 US 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 2024#

• You can download the problems file for USEMO 2024 now.
• Registration opens around October 2 on AoPS portal. It remains open until end-of-day October 25 or when capacity is reached.
• Day I is Sat. 26 October 2024, from 12:30pm ET to 5:00pm ET.
• Day II is Sun. 27 October 2024, from 12:30pm ET to 5:00pm ET.
• On each day, the AoPS portal will be functional between 12:00 noon ET and 6:00pm ET, to allow some time for setup and for scanning and submitting solutions. The problems are available for download starting 12:30pm ET.
  • You can check your registration status at this link.
• Discussion of problems opens at 7:00pm ET each evening after the exam.
• Volunteers for grading are now open; see below.
• Problem proposals were due May 10, 2024.

The organizers of the USEMO are grateful to be sponsored in 2024 by the CoRe Lab, Institute of Artificial Intelligence, Peking University.

Links and downloads#

• Registration and submission portal
• Answer sheet template
• Full rules and procedures
• Mission statement
• Problem proposal guidelines (for authors)

Contact#

The director of the USEMO is Evan Chen. You may use the email $\text{usemo}\texttt{@}\text{evanchen}{.}\text{cc}$.

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)

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: Linus Tang, Hannah Fox, Henrick Rabinovitz

Volunteer#

Volunteering is open to anyone who is not themselves eligible to compete. The two biggest things we can use help with are:

• 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.
  To sign up for grading, fill out this 2024 form.

• Problem proposals: we welcome proposals for problems from anyone who is not eligible for the contest. See the problem proposal guidelines. For USEMO 2024, the deadline for submissions is 10 May 2024.

Please contact the directors for further details on these, or if you have other ideas on how you could help out.