Invitational Competition

The Harvard-MIT Invitational Competition is an annual competition, held in the beginning of April. Approximately fifty of the highest-scoring individuals at HMMT February are invited to participate. The competition consists of one proof-style test, to be taken by the competitors at home or in school under proctored conditions.

The aim of this contest is twofold. The first is to provide an opportunity for the strongest competitors at HMMT February to further showcase their abilities, this time by solving proof-style problems, rather than the short answer problems that appear on the individual rounds of HMMT. The second is to encourage exposure to mathematical topics not traditionally found on high school math contests, such as calculus, linear algebra, and elementary real analysis. We feel that the serious study of such topics is often put off until college, and that the strict divide between the topics admissible on high school contests and those that are not is arbitrary and, in the case of contests in which the most talented young mathematicians compete, unwarranted.

Thus, in addition to problems of a nature similar to those on contests such as the International Mathematical Olympiad (IMO) and the Team Round of HMMT February, the HMIC will also include some problems involving mathematical concepts traditionally outside the realm of high school math contests. The exact range of these concepts will be left to the discretion of the problem czars.

The first HMIC took place in April 2013. Results from the competition can be found here, as well as problems and solutions (the solution to #5 is here).