Your Math Contest Score Does Not Matter That Much

Posted: November 11, 2025

There are plenty of differences between what parents view as necessary for university admission and what university admissions officers (AOs) actually care about. Perhaps the most blatant example is an overemphasis on math (and sometimes programming) competitions. While I am aware of other subject competitions, math and programming are certainly the most popular and thus require a significant amount of personal investment for any stand-out performance. Such investment may take away from other hobbies AOs want to see from you.

Why They Do Not Matter That Much

These days, I look at university applications like I look at employment. Both require you to convince the people looking at your application that you are a very good (perhaps the best) candidate for this position. When doing this, it is essential to think about what an AO would think of different things given what you are applying to, as well as who the AOs are. A common pitfall is to assume the AOs' attitudes are the same throughout time and in different countries. This could not be further from the truth. In East Asia, test and competition scores matter significantly more than they do in much of the West (like here in Canada). Here, the AOs evaluating your application usually do not share the same mindset (and the university probably does not want them to).

From my understanding, parents often believe that universities try to accept the "smartest" individuals. This is simply not true. In fact, they will probably prefer to admit someone offering a unique perspective. Intelligence is simply part of what is needed to succeed in Engineering (as it is in most competitive programs). That can be determined in ways that every applicant will have access to. Since standardized tests here do not count for admissions, this usually comes down to high school grades. If you have proven yourself competent there, you do not need to further prove your intellect. Instead, you will have to show the AOs that your interest is great enough.

Math competitions can help you more in cases where they are related to the program you are applying for. The Univeristy of Waterloo's Faculty of Mathematics recommends students participate in their competitions, and I would not be surprised if other math and computer science programs do the same. However, these competitions are less relevant when your program of choice is not directly related. For example, prospective engineering students may prefer to participate in hackathons, robotics teams, or design challenges. These are much more relevant to engineering, as much so as math competitions may be for math students.

As well, a high score in math and computer science competitions are not the only way to show your interests in those areas. They are certainly one way to do it, but good projects may also help (ones which use relevant material). So would organizations interacting with relevant material. The week before I wrote this, I reviewed one university application that mentioned how the applicant was able to improve attendance at their computer science club by doing more hands-on demonstrations of algorithms. I was honestly more impressed with them than I would be at someone who made the Canadian Computing Olympiad (CCO) as they showed an ability to get more students interested and have them understand these algorithms. Such initiatives show that you do not need a high score to show your interest, so getting a low score should never be seen as the end of the world.

Clearly, you need to show the AOs you are interested in the program. However, do not spend every waking moment on it. Universities may prefer well-rounded students. U of T Engineering certainly does, if the FAQ they give to their Fall Campus Day voluneers is to be believed. There are many ways to do this and what is best for any reader may vary. I am doubtful they would decline someone if they were talented enough, but those people are few. I have certainly known some of those people but chances are, you are not one of them.

Luck Plays a Role, Too

As mentioned above, parents believe math competitions are a good way to determine their child(ren)'s intelligence. This is also an inaccurate view, to an extent. I have been familiar with online communities of students interested in math and programming competitions for over four years (though this may end once I leave OCMC). During that time, I have seen very strong evidence that luck plays a factor. Let us go through some examples.

Luck

Most problems in math competitions can be broken down into four categories: Number Theory, Algebra, Geometry, and Combinatorics (lumped in with probability problems). I am told one competition this year featured very few geometry problems and a high number of probability problems. If you are best at probability, you would probably have scored higher on the 2025 contest than in another year. The opposite is true if you are best at geometry.

I can also pull examples from my history writing online programming competitions. I was pretty good at more ad-hoc problems, while dynamic programming was a major weak spot (as were other more well-known algorthm concepts earlier on, such as graph algorithms). This led to incredibly lucky performances on some competitions and poor performaces on others held shortly after based on which problems were included.

There is also the probability of getting particularly unlucky for other reasons. You may suffer from an illness or injury on the day of the competition, but that competition can not be moved for your illness. You may also have other assessments or commitments at school which exhaust you before the competition starts, preventing you from thinking as sharply during the competition.

Cheating

When people's self-worth is tied up in a test score, cheating will naturally follow. Most math competitions indeed have a rampant cheating problem. Cheaters will naturally push cutoff scores for distinction, honour roll, and invitational competitions up. With the advent of ChatGPT, programming competitions are also facing a cheating problem . If dishonesty continues unchecked, a high score would be a less reliable indicator of interest or intelligence, potentially making them less important in the future. This was especially true of the Canadian Computing Competition (CCC) in 2025, which refused to release the usual results due to a disturbingly high number using Generative AI during the competition.

Later updates to this

In 2025, the AMC appeared to have a record number of cheaters, with the top 1% of contestants all getting a perfect score surprising many who regularly write and/or keep track of these competitions. I won't be surprised if the cheaating problem continues to get worse in math competitions, unless people stop believing such high scores are the most valuable extracurricular activity.

Conclusion

Despite my disdain for how math and programming competitions are viewed by a lot of people, they are good when done for the right reasons. They are a great way to practice problem-solving, learn new algorithms or mathematical concepts, and find people with similar interests. However, they can be damaging when all that seems to matter is one's score, especially considering it does not actually matter as much as many think it does and such a score is good a good representation of the participant.

Last updated: 12/19/2025