Math League & Mathcounts

[carseals]

my son's school  is currently  in the math league contest ,some of my friends' kids are in the Mathcounts ,has anyone here compared these two systems ?

[Dmmetler]

If Math League you mean Continental Math League, It's designed for schools to introduce all their students to the more advanced problem solving skills and to encourage participation in math. A school can enter as many teams as they like, and as many kids can be on a team as you wish, with two levels of competition, one designed for kids who are on grade level, one for kids working above grade level. Each student can be on only one team. Both involve math that is similar to Math Kangaroo-for the most part, grade level skills, but more involved problem solving and logical thinking. Only the top 6 scores for each round are entered into team totals, and those 6 kids can change from round to round. Students compete at or higher than their math grade level. Basically, they want every kid to have a chance to try their hand at competition math, and have made it easy to do so.

 

If you think MK is liberal on awards, CML is even more so. Each team gets 2 medals and four certificates to distribute, no matter how low the scores are for a group (this year, my top 2nd grader had a grand score of 6 out of 18. She was the only one in her grade who actually completed the tests instead of getting frustrated and quitting when she only knew how to start on a problem or two-I actually have a stock of extra team awards because as a sponsor, I refuse to give awards to kids who don't at least try every round), and every kid who gets a perfect score across the rounds gets a national award, no matter how many of them are there. Most years, there are quite a few-in DD's division, there were 26 this year, and it's one of the smallest (the numbers drop dramatically in middle school because the kids who were doing the above grade level CML are now doing AMC 8 and MathCounts). In 4th grade, there were over 100 national winners with perfect scores.

 

 

CML is great for homeschoolers because they let students enter as individuals, who are then eligible only for individual awards, at a reduced fee. So, if I don't have enough kids for an X grade team, I can simply enter the single kid or two as an individual. Any student can enter as an individual as long as they don't have a team to participate in.

Edited May 19, 2016 by dmmetler

[carseals]

thanks for the answer, very insightful ,the  reason I asked this question is because I know some very strong math students could not even get into their school Mathcounts team ,these kids go to the same after school math program as my son does , but their school is regional magnet school ,competition in the school is high , and my son seems get in Math League contest team pretty easily , and next year , his school will start the Mathcounts , not sure if he still can get on the board easily

[daijobu]

MathCounts comes up a fair bit on these boards, try searching old posts.  Here's one.