Changes for 2008-09

This academic year (2008-09) is the 20th year of the USAMTS. In our constant efforts to improve the contest, we have made a number of changes, outlined below.

• Solutions can now be submitted either by mail or by uploading a PDF file directly from this website. Solutions will no longer be accepted by email or fax (these were very labor-intensive for us to process). Web submission will allow us to instantly record your solution as received, and will let us get all the submissions to the graders more quickly. See the complete guidelines for submitting solutions for more details.
• We will no longer be issuing "Commended" scores. Some issues with doing this in the past is that there were no clear criteria for the graders to follow in determining which solutions would be commended, and also commended solutions were not "worth anything" in terms of the point total. Removing commended scores should make the grading process a bit more streamlined.
• We will no longer be posting students' solutions to the problems; instead, within a few days of the conclusion of each round, we will post "official" solutions written by the USAMTS staff. This will allow students to view complete solutions to each problem very quickly after the end of each round, instead of having to wait a month or more for solutions under the old system. Also, under the new system, students can submit just a single PDF file if they are submitting solutions electronically, and there is now no need to submit LaTeX code, image files, and the like.
• The procedure for reporting an incorrectly graded solution will be made more rigorous. (Details of this procedure will be posted after the conclusion of Round 1.) In particular, all scoring issues will be handled through this website, and not via the Art of Problem Solving USAMTS forum.
• We have written a more complete set of contest rules that will hopefully address some of the ambiguities of previous years.
• The USAMTS website has been redesigned to bring it more up-to-date with modern web standards.
• Richard Rusczyk has stepped down as the Director of the USAMTS (although he is still very much involved in the management of the contest); Dr. David Patrick is the new Director. Dr. Patrick and the entire USAMTS staff can be contacted at usamts@usamts.org.

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