This is a 13-week group for students working toward the AIME and the USAJMO. We spend seven weeks on the AIME and then six on writing proofs.
Proof writing is the part that usually gets skipped. You can score well on the AIME and still lose most of the marks on the olympiad because the write-up has a gap in it. The second half of this course is about closing those gaps.
There are 8 spots, the class runs 90 minutes a week, and the fee is $45 per student per class.
Phase I runs from mid-December to February and covers the AIME. We work on the question types that separate a 6 from a 10, on pacing under the new computer-based format, and on the checking habits that stop strong students from losing points they have already earned.
Phase II runs from February to March and covers olympiad writing. Every student submits one complete solution a week and gets it back marked line by line.
Most preparation stops at qualification. A student who scores 10 on the AIME and has never had a proof read closely walks into the USAJMO and earns a 1 for a correct idea, badly written.
By the end of Phase I, a student can work a full AIME paper without burning time on questions they were never going to get, recognize the structures that repeat in AIME number theory, counting and geometry, and check an integer answer carefully enough to catch an arithmetic slip before submitting.
By the end of Phase II, a student can write a complete proof with stated assumptions and an explicit conclusion, spot the gaps graders punish such as an unproven lemma or an unjustified "clearly", and stay on an unfamiliar problem for an hour without stalling.
There are two things to try before you read the rest. The first shows how we grade, and the second is the kind of problem we start with.