Mathematical Olympiad Summer Program

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The Mathematical Olympiad Program (abbreviated MOP) is a 3-week intensive problem solving camp held at the Carnegie Mellon University to help high school students prepare for math olympiads, especially the International Mathematical Olympiad. While the program is free to participants, invitations are limited to the top finishers on the USAMO.

Purpose

One purpose of MOP is to select and train the US team for the International Mathematical Olympiad. This is done at the start of MOP via a team selection test (TST). The results of the USAMO and the TST are weighted equally when selecting the US IMO team.

The other important purpose of MOP is to train younger students in Olympiad-level problem solving and broaden their mathematical horizons.

Information

MOP, for the past few years, was held at Carnegie Mellon University. However, MAA has announced that MOP 2025 will be held at the Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy, a location with history of hosting the MOP in the 1990s. While the dates vary from year to year, MOP is generally held in the last three weeks of June.

Invitations are extended to the top non-Canadian finishers on USAMO and USAJMO. Students receiving invitations can be divided into four groups:

Black MOP: Approximately the top 10 non-senior scorers on the previous year's IMO Team Selection Tests and the IMO team are invited to MOP and are placed in the black group.

Blue MOP: The next 15 or so non-senior non-Canadian finishers are invited to attend MOP. This approximately corresponds to a score slightly above the silver cutoff.

Green and Red MOP: The top 30 freshmen and sophomores on the USAMO as well as the top 12 scorers on the USAJMO are invited to attend MOP with the goal of providing them with a foundation in Olympiad-level mathematics.

In 2008, another group was added. The girls who will be representing the United States at the European Girls Math Olympiad will attend MOP to prepare for that contest. This group is colloquially known as Pink MOP.

Structure of the Program

MOP is divided into three groups that roughly correspond with the first three kinds of invitations. Black MOP consists of the previous year's highest scorers on the Team Selection Tests and contains the IMO team members and alternates. Blue MOP is for the second group of invitees and mostly consists of students who just completed their junior or sophomore year of high school. Finally, Red MOP consists of all the freshmen who were invited to participate, as well as Girls' Math Olympiad participants. Instructors have discretion in selecting which group they're part of and may choose to transfer part way through the program; this generally involves members of Black dropping down to Blue or occasionally members of Red promoting themselves to Blue. The three groups take classes and practice tests separately and are given different levels of material to practice with.

Each Weekday consists of three instructional sessions: 9:00 AM - 10:30 AM, 10:40 AM - 12:10 PM, and 1:15 PM - 2:45 PM. Classes usually consist of a lecture followed by a problem set. Solutions are often presented by students with the supervision of an instructor.

Timed and graded olympiad style tests are an integral part of MOP. Every other day, a 4.5-hour, 3 or 4-question test is administered in place of the afternoon lecture, and is graded with comments within 1-2 days.

The combination of these makes MOP an extraordinarily intense experience. One participant at 2007 MOP calculated that by the end of the second week members of Blue MOP had already spent more time in a classroom than most calculus classes do in a year, and by the end of the third week participants had spent 170 hours over 19 days either in class or taking practice test for an average of roughly 9 hours a day of math- and that's before time spent doing problem sets is included.

History and Culture

MOP was created in 1974 as a training camp for the first United States IMO team.

At the time that MOP was established the official name was simply "Mathematical Olympiad Program", which was the source of the original abbreviation "MOP". At some point, however, the official name was changed to "Mathematical Olympiad Summer Program" and the official abbreviation became "MOSP". Despite this change, participants and alumni almost universally continued to refer to the program as "MOP". Although some administrators continued to use "MOSP" in official documents, students used "MOP" in every setting. One former participant testifies, "Any lost souls using the other appellation are looked upon with pity and regret." Finally, the administration relented in 2017, officially renaming the camp as "MOP".

Previous locations for MOP have included IMSA, Rutgers University, West Point (US Military Academy), and the US Naval Academy.

MOP is not only a training camp but also a competition in and of itself. In addition to the regularly administered practice olympiads and the TSTST, returning students write and administer the ELMO (an amorphous acronym) and new students write and administer the RELMO (Revenge ELMO).

Popular pastimes at MOP include chess, card games, Live Action Mafia, Starcraft (which was explicitly banned in 2009) and Ultimate Frisbee.