ECAE is again offering a test site for the AMC 10 or AMC 12 tests this year for students whose schools don’t offer them the tests. ECAE’s test site will be available for both the AMC 10 and the AMC 12 on the “A” date (Tuesday 7 February 2012) and on the “B” date (Wednesday 22 February 2012) for those tests. Register soon in view of high demand for the “B” date tests. Limited tests are available for the AMC 10 or AMC 12 on the “B” date. Testing through ECAE will be at Edina Community Center room 351, with the room reserved from 4:00pm to 6:00pm on each of those dates for these seventy-five minute tests, with testing beginning as soon as possible after 4:00pm to accommodate students coming from other school districts.
Edina Community Center #351
5701 Normandale Road
Edina, MN 55424
This building was Edina East High School in the 1970s. From street level the building looks like an old, tan brick, three-story high school building. Online driving directions are somewhat confusing because the Edina Community Center is on the east frontage road of state Highway 100 (that’s what Normandale Road is), not particularly close to the most convenient highway exit. There is a dedicated parking lot to the north of Edina Community Center and parking shared with South View Middle School to the east of the Community Center.
Feel free to contact me, Karl M. Bunday (ECAE math coach), by email if you are interested. The tests are described in the AMC FAQ and on the specific page for each test.
http://www.amc8.org/e-exams/e5-amc10/amc10.shtml
http://www.amc8.org/e-exams/e6-amc12/amc12.shtml
The key idea is that there is no younger age limit for either of these tests, so any learner who is ready for them can take them as many years as they have until they reach the upper age eligibility limit. On the other hand, the tests are challenging, so the AMC 10 is most appropriate for a student who has finished a beginning algebra course and gone well into a high school geometry course. (As one example, a student in the first year of UMTYMP in February 2012 will likely find the AMC 10 to be extremely challenging, while a student in the second year of UMTYMP is well recommended to take the AMC 10 this school year and each year until eligibility runs out. The AMC 12 test will be quite challenging to any student who has not had a “precalculus” or “analysis” class that includes trigonometry, so the recommendation is learning trigonometry first before taking the AMC 12, and meanwhile taking the AMC 10 for practice solving problems that are unusual compared to most school mathematics problems. As another example, no student in Minnesota attained a perfect score of 150 on either of these tests in 2009, 2010, or 2011. The tests are meant to be a challenge for the best-prepared students.) All AMC tests require doing arithmetic for intermediate steps in problem-solving without the use of an electronic calculator. These tests offer a path to other mathematics opportunities, including, with exceptionally high scores, participation on the United States team to the International Mathematical Olympiad.
If you are interested, please register online for the ECAE testing site for the AMC 10 or AMC 12. Please fill out all the information requested, some of which is standard information that the AMC program wants to know about each student. The registration fee, lowered from last year, is $15 (fifteen dollars) and will include practice materials. The payment address for checks to ECAE will appear on the online response page to your online registration. The ECAE math coach will follow up individually by email with families who register, confirming the payment address and providing tips on how to prepare for the tests.
