General guidelines

When preparing your solutions, please follow these guidelines. Failure to follow these guidelines may result in your solutions not being accepted for scoring.

• Your name, USAMTS ID number, and the round and problem numbers must appear on every page.
• Use complete sentences. Do not submit scratch work, formulas with no explanation, or other half-baked stuff. Your solutions should be final, well-written, and thought-out.
• Do not use color. The solutions will be printed and/or photocopied in black-and-white for grading.
• Use standard 8 1/2 by 11 inch letter-size paper.
• If handwriting, your writing must be clear and legible; the graders will not try to decipher sloppy handwriting.
• No page should contain work for more than one problem. In other words, start each problem on a new page.
• Your name, USAMTS ID number, and the round and problem numbers must appear on every page.
(This is so important that we're saying it twice.)

You have two options for submitting USAMTS solutions: mail or web upload. (You may not submit solutions by email or fax -- any such submissions will be immediately rejected.)

Submitting solutions by mail

You may handwrite or type your solutions. We strongly recommend using these blank solution sheets. (However, if you wish to use blank paper, you may do so.)

• All pages must be stapled together, with the problems in order (Problem 1 should be first, then Problem 2, etc.).
• Keep a copy of your solutions for yourself, but send us the original.

When mailing, please note that the mail submission deadline is a postmark deadline -- it is OK if we receive the solution after the deadline as long as the postmark is on or before the deadline. Mail solutions to:

Submitting solutions by web upload

There is a form on your My USAMTS page from which you can submit your solutions directly via the website. To do this, your solutions must be in a single PDF file. Absolutely no other file formats will be accepted.

IMPORTANT!  The deadline for submitting solutions via the website is

Writing your solutions using LaTeX (see below) is the best way to make a nice PDF file. Alternatively, you can convert many other document types (such as Microsoft Word documents) to PDF. You can download one of a number of free PDF conversion programs -- we recommend CutePDF Writer. Or you can use a free web-basd PDF conversion service such as PDF Online. Additionally, most scanner software has an option to scan documents into a PDF file.

Using LaTeX to type your solutions

LaTeX is a mathematical typesetting system that produces very high quality documents. The USAMTS strongly encourages all of our participants to learn LaTeX and to use it to write their solutions. However, please note that it is not required to use LaTeX; you may handwrite or use other software to write your solutions if you wish, provided you follow all of the above guidelines.

The Art of Problem Solving website and the AoPS Wiki contain tutorials on using LaTeX.

Students using LaTeX to typeset their solutions are strongly encouraged to use the template files provided by the USAMTS. Click here for the template solutions file. This is the file you should use to input your solutions. Instructions for how to use it are included in the file. You must also download the USAMTS include file. This file must be in the same folder as your solutions file.

The USAMTS LaTeX template uses the fancyhdr LaTeX package. If you already have fancyhdr with your LaTeX installation, then you don't need to do anything. Otherwise, you should download fancyhdr.sty and put it in the same folder as your solutions file.