How did you deal with MATHCOUNTS disappointments?

[Mewto55555]

[xpmath]

Anyway, after I realized I had failed, I was somewhat disappointed, but got over it rather quickly. The main thing to me was that I actually knew how to solve the problems, it was just stupid mistakes...and some other stuff. Also I figured I hadn't been working hard enough, so it was all my fault and I didn't deserve to make countdown anyway .

[Quickster94]

I guess the only time I was ever "disappointed" in MC was nats my 8th grade year, my goal was to make first quarter (3rd and 2nd previously), and I didn't, 20 (decent for me)+6 (horrible). I scored one point lower than the previous year But still placed slightly higher. Anyway, I knew my score the instant we received target answers, and was very disappointed, I basically just screwed up, but I tried to pull it together for the team round. Looking back, after one year, I don't think it's made that much of a difference.
Would I have been happier to have gotten 30 places higher? yes Do I still feel bad about not doing that today? no
I focused on other stuff, AMC's-AIME-USAMO, debate, scholar's bowl, piano etc. Basically, as people have said, remember that as a nationals competitor, you're already highly intelligent, and in the grand scope of things, a place at one middle school contest on one day won't drastically affect your life.

As for the sleep thingy, I seem to have gotten less than 5 hours of sleep all of the 3 Thursday nights, partially b/c it was in a hotel, partially b/c of nerves, I'd like to blame that as the reason for my 8th grade disappointment, but in 7th grade I scored very well (for my standards) on little sleep as well, so...

[the future]

Umm yea...so I didnt even get top 50 in my state my 8th grade year. Yea top 50 in my state(actually maybe even top 80 since they didnt even bother to give me the ranking since it was so low).

And Ive made the USAMO the last two years (10 on AIME this year) so anythings possible. You just have to keep on persevering, stay motivated, and dont let these things force you off your path for your future.

[math154]

Well, I came in to the competition not knowing what to expect at all, and with no particular goals. Thursday basically consisted of some light math practice at night and getting owned by my coaches for bad behavior on AoPS which apparently people actually know about. I tried sleeping at like 10, but didn't fall asleep until 3 apparently, so I ended up getting <3 hours of sleep. In the competition, I was being excessively slow for some reason (I wasn't feeling that well either). Also, a careless mistake on 29 made me multiply two 3 digit numbers (don't ask why I actually bothered doing this) which took about 3 minutes, which I could have used to find my arithmetic errors on the ones I left blank. I only put answers for 28 problems, and got a 26. My mistakes consisted of misreading (the stairs one) and doubting the Multinomial Theorem on 29...I left the triangle and areas problem and the number one blank...if I remember correctly, I missed both because of arithmetic errors (so I didn't get answers for either and left them blank). On the target round, I was in "MATHCOUNTS=trivial and brute force" mode, so I missed #5 somehow. I guess it was surprising when I found out I made countdown (I gave up hope after 11th and 12th were announced, and was very surprised to get 7th), since I looked at the answers afterward and saw that I missed at least 4 on the sprint and got a 14 target (as a general rule, I subtract 2 points for careless mistakes, so I thought I got a 38, and I thought the cutoff would be around 40 or 41).

In retrospect, if I had been faster and had a clearer mind, then "I could have gotten a 29/16=45." But of course that doesn't mean anything.

I still don't know if this was a "good performance" for me or not from a lack of experience, but I think I did relatively well to what I was predicting (20-30th?). I'll assume that this was near my peak performance.

MATHCOUNTS is what truly got me started in math (I was pretty horrible compared to everyone who visits this forum in 6th grade, and even worse before that), so even though I don't like this competition much, I guess I will always have to respect it.

xpmath: There are many people who could have made and deserved to make countdown but didn't because of a below average performance. You are one of those people.

[james4l]

Strangely I did AIME problems before I heard of MATHCOUNTS

It is amazing how David can place so high with so little sleep though.

[math154]

Well there's a really good environment where you live, so that's not too surprising (as in you probably knew about AIME in elementary school). However, I lived in College Station, Texas. Which has about a negative zero environment, other than Kevin Li. Then I moved to Missouri and learned about how bad I was at math (6th grade)...thanks to Mewto55555 and tinytim. This was all my motivation. Also with lots of luck a random person my parents knew told my parents about AoPS. Win.

Sorry about your having to room with David.

[james4l]

Actually I was the only one to know of the AIME in 5th grade back then... but then again this is the Bay Area.

[pythag011]

Strangely I did USAMO problems before I heard of MATHCOUNTS.

Eh, my area actually isn't a very good environment. (No, I don't live in bay area. Amazing.) SoCal doesn't have as a good as an environment as bay area, so it's still actually pretty good? Unfortunately my region has a negative one environment. Then, I somehow got AMC 8 as a result of a google search of something totally unrelated. So then I learned about amc and aime and usamo and imo and mop and tst.

I arrived at Wednesday, didn't really do anything. (Other than stay up the whole night.) Our coach has some rather unfortunate rules which I don't really like. So then Thursday, I didn't really do anything either. Darn. Didn't really do any math that day. Friday was the contest, somehow I did the first 10 problems in FIFTEEN minutes, so then I decided to not check any of the problems while I was doing them, and that improved my speed by a lot... target was pretty easy, didn't have any real problems with it, mieh.

[dnkywin]

Bleh, I slept at 11 and got up at 6 for a morning jog... But I thought the jog really helped, so whatever.
Ha. AIME_is_hard sucks at running. Take my word for it.
And no, that is not spam. I'm being serious.

Anyways, I'm not exactly disappointed at my placement, but I sort of am. I mean, 1 question (actually, 1 reading error) away from first written weighs down on you sometimes. But, just use it as a motivation to do better next time, and don't beat yourself up on it...

[mathlearner]

ah .. "don't beat yourself up" for careless mistakes - much easier said than done for some of us!! But I'm really curious about your "jog"! Did you go outside the hotel to do this? Who did you go with - especially at 6 am?! Did your coach know you got up so early .. and left your room? Did your roommate wake too? Where did you jog? (sorry, I'm just fascinated by that) - I know there was a sort of boardwalk between the hotels. I guess you are one of those "morning people" I mentioned in an earlier post! Do you think you would have done as well if you took the test at say 11 pm?

[SnowHawk]

You know, I totally failed MATHCOUNTS this year.

However, I have one piece of advice!

You reap what you sow.... In other words, your results depend on the amount of effort you put into preparing.

Take me, (fail), for and example... I didn't start preparing for mathcounts until like 2 weeks before the competitions. I barely went through my collecition of practice tests.

I actually heard later that one of the top kids did 200 problems a day

So you see that you indeed will gain as much as you put forth

[Mewto55555]

[math154]

You know you pass 200 with only 6 MATHCOUNTS tests... But worth ethic is very important (as well as passion and some degree of talent).

[pythag011]

Eh, I really didn't do that much mc practice, unless usamo practice and learning knot theory and abstract algebra translates into mc practice.

Also important is the skill of doing better on the real test than on practices. (This is pretty useful.)

[mathlearner]

Yes, doing better (or equally as well) on the real test vs practice is definitely important (but not sure how much of a "skill" it is - I mean, skills can always be improved upon - but just how do you go about ensuring doing better on actual tests??) However, while work ethic is important, I don't necessarily agree that a person who puts the most effort or practice into MATHCOUNTS will necessarily do better than someone like pythag011 who admittedly "didn't do that much mc practice" -- I think there are a LOT of intangibles - otherwise, how can you explain someone who did put the time into MC but did relatively poorly (compared to their effort) but did well on higher level contests like AMC, USAMO, and the like (where they put minimal effort)? I personally know several people that fell into this category and simply can't understand how they screwed up at Nats!! Any ideas how this can be?

[Mewto55555]

[pythag011]

[Sephiroth]

nothing makes up for the money and prizes they give you...
jk
but i have to admit it was pretty disappointing

[jmerry]

I have it too, and I'm pretty sure that "skill" of doing better on the real test than on practices is just a quirk of brain chemistry. During the real test, you're high on adrenaline; many people lose focus and do poorly, while some others can work faster with no loss in clarity.
The practical advice is to learn how you react, and then adjust your preparation strategies to work with that. For me, doing one practice round to understand the format and then doing harder problems is more useful than repeatedly doing something just like the test I expect. MOP experience doubled my AIME scores, without noticeably changing my USAMO scores.
Also, it lets me go into pretty much any test with confidence, and that just feels good.