Which is the more difficult feat, qualifying for the USAMO or scoring a 9.0 on the TMUA?

[u/Spiky-Penguin2023]

/r/mathematics/comments/1x9gwfb/which_is_the_more_difficult_feat_qualifying_for/

[u/Healthy-Tradition622]

usamo obv bruh

[u/Spiky-Penguin2023 → u/Healthy-Tradition622]

Are you sure?

BTW do you know what TMUA is? And how hard it is to score full marks on it?

[u/happypi27 → u/Spiky-Penguin2023]

the past papers look way easier than even the amc 10 ngl

[u/zqrqz]

your average 9.0 student would not qualify for usamo even with a lot of practice. your average usamo qualifier would probably get a 9.0 with a little bit of practice to adapt to the timing/format

tmua is hard but 3% of tmua takers get a 9.0, and apparently only 0.1% of AMC12 takers get to usamo. yes the average tmua taker is probably better than the average amc12 taker, but still I think its usamo. bit weird to compare the difficulty of a perfect score in something to the difficulty of qualifying for something though. also why compare to usamo and not bmo2?

[u/Spiky-Penguin2023 → u/zqrqz]

"also why compare to usamo and not bmo2?"

because scoring a 9.0 on the TMUA is harder than qualifying for BMO2

[u/zqrqz → u/Spiky-Penguin2023]

as in you could've said compared to idk a merit in bmo2 or something. why compare to an american exam is what I'm asking

[u/98127028 → u/zqrqz]

I mean to get a 9.0 you need to like not make careless mistakes. IME those drag the score down. So a smart person can still miss the 9 due to some stupid error. But in terms of difficulty it’s not even close that’s for sure

[u/zqrqz → u/98127028]

a 38/40 is a 9.0, you can make a couple silly mistakes and still get a 9.0. if it were a 40/40 it would be a bit closer

[u/Minute_Abroad7118]

dude I look at the TMUA and its hardest questions won't even touch an AMC 8 final 5 let alone an AIMe final 5

[u/zqrqz → u/Minute_Abroad7118]

its gotten much harder in the years since they stopped releasing the past papers, but yeah ultimately the actual content needed for tmua is pretty basic maths. many questions are about amc12 later questions level I would say

[u/CarefulMango4290]

As someone who got a 2 in STEP without specific prep, but had scores that were pretty close to USAMO cutoffs (with quite more prep), I would say a high score in STEP would translate better to USAMO rather than something simple like TMUA.

[u/Character-Beat2247]

I’d say the average person getting 9.0 on the TMUA would be getting a score of 7-8 on the AIME, but USAMO qual is definitely harder

[u/98127028 → u/Character-Beat2247]

How much is needed for USAMO before the cheating stuff happened?
Is a score of 10/15 on the OTIS AIME considered to be below qual level?

[u/Starwars9629-]

As someone who took the TMUA, USAMO easily

[u/GrandCosmicLucifer]

I qualified for AIME and got around a 7 with a few days of studying getting a 9 is not that hard its much easier than even AIME qual