Mock MathCounts

A Mock MathCounts is a contest intended to mimic an actual MathCounts exam. A number of Mock MathCounts competitions have been hosted on the Art of Problem Solving message boards. Some are made by one community member, while others may be sourced from a group or the general community. Then they are administered to the AoPS community. Different users may have a different way of participating: some may require signups, while others do not.

Mock MathCounts' are usually very popular in the months leading up to the actual MathCounts competition. There is no guarantee that community members will make Mock MathCounts' in any given year, but it's usually a good bet that someone will.

Tips for Writing a Mock MathCounts

Here are some tips to write a good mock MathCounts:

• Have multiple people work on the problems. Getting more people will get variety and prevents mocks from having too many problems from one subject. Having a group is also good so they can discuss which problems are good or need improvement, and fix errors. More than one person working on a mock can get the test done faster and often times better quality.
• Get people to proofread it. Have someone to look over the problems, make sure they are appropriate in difficulty and order, and understandable by the general audience.
• Get people to work on the problems. Sometimes the actual problem difficulty may vary from what it appears when the problem is actually worked on.
• Don't be afraid to harshly criticize your problems. Usually criticism is what helps the mocks get better!
• Once the test has been released, it is usually a good idea to keep the answers from being released at the same time. This can help prevent cheating, and also gives the problem solvers more time to make sure the problems are solved correctly.
• Make sure the problems are original. The AoPS community does not want to waste time seeing a collection of boring, cliche problems that in principle are identical to an existing problem from a past MathCounts, with a few numbers modified.
• If you are really out of problems, it is fine to get problems from past competitions. If you do so, choose with caution, beware of copyright, and choose from lesser known competitions. Don't choose a problem from a recent MathCounts competition; choose one from a trivial competition few people have heard of.
• Add variety. Nobody wants to see a round with 15 counting problems or 20 algebra problems. Generally, algebra and geometry should have a larger emphasis than number theory and counting. The target round should have problems from all four subjects.

Basically, getting many people to work on the mock is a great way to help improve the quality, though it is not always the case if everyone gets off task and "helpers" becomes "parasites".

Past Mock Mathcounts

Listed below are several Mock Mathcounts' which have been hosted over AoPS in the past.

Difficulty is rated on a scale from 0 to 5, where 1 is school level and 4 is national level. Please help with rating all of them.

Also note that "author" is the user who started the mock competition, not his or her helpers.

The tests in each table are ordered by user-created difficulty ratings.

2006

	Author	Difficulty	Initial Discussion	Problems	Answers	Results/Discussion
Mock Mathcounts A	#H34N1		Initial Discussion	Problems	Answers
Mock Mathcounts B	goldendomer		Initial Discussion	Problems

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2009

	Author	Difficulty	Initial Discussion	Problems	Answers	Results/Discussion
42nd Mock Mathcounts	xpmath		Initial Discussion	Sprint/Target Team		Results/Discussion
Mock MC School	PowerOfPi		Initial Discussion	Problems
Mock MC Chapter	PowerOfPi			Problems	Answers	Results/Discussion
Mock MC State	PowerOfPi			Problems	Answers	Results/Discussion

2010

	Author	Difficulty	Initial Discussion	Problems	Answers	Results/Discussion
Mock Mathcounts Sprint	Butler		Initial Discussion	Problems

2011

	Author	Difficulty	Initial Discussion	Problems	Answers	Results/Discussion
Mock Mathcounts A	BOGTRO		Initial Discussion	Problems	Answers	Results/Discussion
Mock Mathcounts Chapter	Mrdavid445		Initial Discussion	Problems
Mock Mathcounts B	Mathc314		Initial Discussion	Problems
Mock Mathcounts Nationals	luppleAOPS		Initial Discussion	Problems

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2012

	Author	Difficulty	Initial Discussion	Problems	Answers	Results/Discussion
Mock Mathcounts	BOGTRO		Initial Discussion	Problems

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2013

	Author	Difficulty	Initial Discussion	Problems	Answers	Results/Discussion
Mock Mathcounts National	forthegreatergood		Initial Discussion	Problems
MATHCOUNTS simulation	mathman523				Problems

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2014

	Author	Difficulty	Initial Discussion	Problems	Answers	Results/Discussion
Mock Mathcounts School	Th3Numb3rThr33	1.3	Initial Discussion	Problems	Answers	Results/Discussion
Mock Mathcounts A	iNomOnCountdown	2.5	Initial Discussion	Problems	Answers	Results/Discussion
Mock Mathcounts B	BOGTRO	3.8	Initial Discussion	Problems		Results/Discussion
Mock Mathcounts National	joey8189681	3.9	Initial Discussion	Problems	Answers	Results/Discussion
Mock Mathcounts C	efang	4.8	Initial Discussion	Problems	Answers	Results/Discussion

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2015

	Author	Difficulty	Initial Discussion	Problems	Answers	Results/Discussion
Mental MathCounts	suli	0.7	Initial Discussion	Problems	Answers	Results/Discussion
Mock Mathcounts Chapter A	RadioActive	2.3	Initial Discussion	Problems	Answers	Results/Discussion
Mock Mathcounts Chapter B	uwotm8	2.6	Initial Discussion	Problems	Answers	Results/Discussion
Mock Mathcounts Chapter C	Th3Numb3rThr33	2.8		Problems	Answers	Results/Discussion
Mock Mathcounts State A	uwotm8	4.2	Initial Discussion	Problems	Answers	Results/Discussion
Crowd Sourced Mock Mathcounts National	DeathLlama9	4.2	Initial Discussion	Problems	Answers	Results/Discussion
Mock Mathcounts State B	Th3Numb3rThr33	4.5	Initial Discussion	Problems	Answers	Results/Discussion
Mock Mathcounts National	Th3Numb3rThr33	4.5	Initial Discussion	Problems	Answers	Results/Discussion
Mock Mathcounts National Target	nosaj	4.5	Initial Discussion	Problems	Answers	Results/Discussion

See Also

• Mock AIME
• Mock AMC
• Mock USAMO
• AoPS Past Contests