fidgetboss_4000 wrote:

Admittedly I'm a old person (college student who's way past AMC stuff), but as someone who's written quite a few mock contests before, I'll just tell you that this "mock AMC" you wrote isn't at all representative of an actual AMC. Skimming through the test, most of the problems, particularly the later problems, are too easy and formulaic, for instance #16 is a one-trick pony where the only step involved is finding the multiplicative order of 10 modulo 13. #22 is a quotidian geometric probability. #24 is even less inspired of a problem, it's just modular arithmetic bashing.

Granted, some MAA problems can also be low quality/formulaic and I feel like the quality of the tests has overall gone down since I graduated high school a few years ago, but even official MAA tests have some particularly creative problems that actually require some clever insight. If you want some creative inspiration from modern MAA tests, take a look at 2019 AMC 10B #24 or 2020 AMC 10A #21.

At its current state, your mock test feels more like a homework assignment the professor of my intro to number theory class in college would hand out than a mock AMC.

For those who are wondering, here’s a quick rundown of what I had in mind when I made each problem.
1. Simple problem that should take 30 seconds
2. Easy concept but requires accuracy, sort of like problem 3 of 2024 AMC 10B
3. Think outside the box for like 1 second
4. Free if you see the trick, impossible if not.
5. Don’t forget to subtract repeated cases, which can easily catch test takers off guard
6. Just bashy casework, I guess
7. Leading the test taker into a false sense of security by getting them to think that two probabilities are equal but in reality they are not
8. Remember to multiply and divide right
9. Expected value bash
10. Rate and time problem
11. Geometric probability but it catches all the noobs if they aren’t careful enough
12. Multiply and add fractions, nothing too special
13. A very intimidating looking problem but in reality it’s just arithmetic bash
14. Turn word problem into algebra
15. Don’t forget the negative case
16. Don’t forget the initial zero after the decimal point
17. Problem that looks like it needs calculus but in reality can be destroyed easily with an invariant
18. Plug and chug the prime powers
19. Remember that the hour hand actually moves
20. Unexpected geometry and number theory collab
21. Know how to graph
22. 3D geometrical probability
23. Number theory bash
24. Euler theorem (I think that’s what it was called)
25. GREEN FN!