The BC Secondary Schools Math Contest (BCSSMC)
The goal of the BC Secondary Schools High School Math Contest is to provide interested students – and their teachers – with a chance to have fun and stretch themselves a little mathematically. We are not trying to single out the very best of the province – there are other contests which do that. Instead, we want to get as many students as possible involved in doing and enjoying mathematics.
Originally, two or three colleges in BC ran their own regional math competitions. Now more than ten universities and colleges join together to offer their local high school students a chance to have fun at a regional math contest. The contests are made up centrally by a group of faculty from various institutions but are administered locally.
The questions vary in degree of difficulty, but our intention is that students who are reasonably good at high school math can successfully answer many of the questions. There are, of course, several few more challenging problems as well, for the students who find high school math “too easy”.
The preliminary round of the contest is held in early April and is written in the participating high schools. It consists of 12 multiple-choice questions and takes 45 minutes. There are two levels: the junior contest is written by students in grades 8-10, while the senior contest is written by students in grades 11 and 12. The high school teachers mark the papers, using an answer key provided. There are no restrictions on the number of students who may write this round.
The Final Round of the BCSSMC is held at the beginning of May. Contests in the Final Round (again, Junior and Senior) include 10 multiple-choice questions and 5 long-answer questions. The top few students from each school are invited with their teachers to the campus of a local sponsoring university or college.
For more information or to view contests and solutions from 2000-2019, visit the main provincial website for the BC Secondary Schools Mathematics Contest, or contact the Chief Contest Organizer, Suzanne Feldberg (sfeldberg@tru.ca).
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