sadas123 wrote:

I used to get the same scores, but here is the things that I did:

1.) I spammed mathcount state mocks then the questions I got wrong I watched vide or did Alcumus on it.
2.)I always tried to set a goal for my score for the mock test then if I didn't reach it I redid the test and each time I tried to get a higher score, if I couldn't do that then I would just read the solutions and then learn the theorem/topics.
3.)I think that you should learn all of the AMC 10 course first because that will help you, I used Volume 1 of AOPS and along with that I used Math Competition for Middle School which gave me a borderline AIME score but I probably forgot but I think that I got a 118.5 or a 114 or something because it was a long time ago on the A
4.)Spam AMC 10 mocks and then learn the topics behind all of the questions, I would say try to answer 15 questions each test and if you can't do that then watch youtube videos on those topics, if you can do that start to answer first 18 questions/ 20 questions.
5.) Practice 1h-2h a day because I used to practice for 5 hours and it got me nowhere so study less but lock in during that time.
6.)Always make sure to do AMC 8 Final 5 to sharpen your Problem Solving skills.
Mathcounts:
I started the year of getting a 20-30 on school round but then improved all the way to 30-40 to state round:

1.) I did Mathcounts trainer STATE past level 30+
2.) I spammed mocks and did the same strategy as the amcs
3.) At Mathcounts Chapter I horribly failed so make sure not to stress and make silly mistakes
4.) Thats all

feels like we all failed chapter but michael and evan clutched up for team score

however, as a reply to the original post, if there's an AMC 10 basics course, i recommend starting with that because typically the intermediate classes are pretty hard especially for people who haven't done the basics course. i actually took the mathcounts/amc8 advanced course, it was actually challenging but with help from the mods i got to finish all my homework on time and it turned out i learned a lot from that one
it really depends on your own skill level though, you might be better than me and could go ahead with amc10 courses