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.

Non-credit

Residential

The Mathematical Olympiad Program (MOP) is a mathematically stimulating experience at Carnegie Mellon University designed to broaden the participants’ view of mathematics while fostering their excitement toward further study. MOP also serves as the MAA AMC’s training initiative that focuses on long-term development for students with exceptional mathematical abilities. This academic program is designed to broaden students’ view of mathematics while enhancing their excitement toward further study, with two primary objectives. The first aim is to substantially supplement the mathematical instruction that students typically receive in school, by teaching advanced mathematical theorems and techniques that are typically encountered in the university. The second is to significantly improve students' problem-solving skills.

Structure of the Program
MOP is divided into three groups that roughly correspond with the first three kinds of invitations. Black MOP consists of that year's USAMO winners 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, although in exceptional cases some 7th and 8th graders have participated. Finally, Red MOP consists of all the freshmen who were invited to participate, as well as Girls' Math Olympiad participants. Students and 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: 8:30 AM - 10:00 AM, 10:15 AM - 11:45 AM, 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 few days, a 4-hour, 4-question test is administered in place of the afternoon lecture, and is graded with comments within 2-3 days.

Team tests also occur weekly. Students are divided into teams of five, in 2008 consisting of one or two blue MOPpers each, and work on a set of thirty problems for approximately half a week. On the day of the contest, the teams present solutions to problems which have not yet been presented, in arbitrary order. The fun starts when all of the easy problems have been taken, and teams resort to certain creative methods in order to solve a problem.

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 and working on the team contest outside of class is included.

Mathematical Olympiad Summer Program

Jun 07 - Jun 28

3 weeks

Residential

0 USD

Registration Costs*:
Early Bird Registration $53.00
Regular Registration $73.00
Late Registration $113.00
* Registration fees do not include the cost of competition materials.