AMC 8, 10 & 12 Explained — Dates, Scoring, and the Path to the AIME
The AMC is where competition math begins in the United States. Run by the Mathematical Association of America (MAA), the American Mathematics Competitions are the entry point to a pathway that runs upward through the AIME, the USA(J)MO, and ultimately the team that represents the country at the International Mathematical Olympiad.
For most families, though, the AMC arrives as a confusing set of names and numbers. Is my child supposed to take the 8, the 10, or the 12? What is the difference between 10A and 10B? Why does leaving a question blank earn points? This guide answers those questions with the rules as the MAA publishes them.
Who each contest is for
Eligibility is governed by two conditions at once — a grade cap and an age cap. A student must satisfy both. The age caps catch families by surprise more often than the grade caps do, because a student who is academically ready may still be too old.
| Contest | Grade | Age on competition day |
|---|---|---|
| AMC 8 | Grade 8 or below | Under 15.5 years old |
| AMC 10 | Grade 10 or below | Under 17.5 years old |
| AMC 12 | Grade 12 or below | Under 19.5 years old |
Note what the grade caps do not say. They say “or below.” A capable seventh grader may sit the AMC 10; a strong ninth grader may sit the AMC 12. Nothing forces a student to climb the ladder one rung per year, and accelerated students routinely skip ahead.
Format and scoring
All three contests are 25 multiple-choice questions with five answer choices. The difference is time, and the difference is how a blank answer is treated.
| AMC 8 | AMC 10 & AMC 12 | |
|---|---|---|
| Questions | 25 | 25 |
| Time limit | 40 minutes | 75 minutes |
| Correct answer | 1 point | 6 points |
| Left blank | 0 points | 1.5 points |
| Wrong answer | 0 points | 0 points |
| Maximum score | 25 | 150 |
The 1.5 points change how you take the test
This is the single most under-appreciated rule in the AMC 10 and AMC 12, and it has a concrete strategic consequence. A blank is worth 1.5 points. A wrong answer is worth nothing. So a pure guess among five choices is worth, on average, 6 × (1/5) = 1.2 points — which is less than the 1.5 you would have earned by leaving it alone.
Guessing blindly is therefore a losing move. Guessing after eliminating even one choice flips the arithmetic: 6 × (1/4) = 1.5, breaking even, and eliminating two choices makes a guess clearly correct to attempt at 2 points. The practical rule that follows is simple — eliminate at least two answers, or leave it blank.
The AMC 8 has no such rule. Blanks earn nothing there, so on the AMC 8 a student should answer every single question, guessing freely on the ones they cannot finish.
No calculators
Calculators are not permitted on any of the three contests, and neither are phones, smartwatches, or similar electronic devices. No question requires one. If a problem looks like it needs heavy arithmetic, that is usually the signal that a cleaner idea has been missed.
What “A” and “B” mean
The AMC 10 and AMC 12 are each offered twice, on two different dates, with two different problem sets: the A competition and the B competition. They are the same contest at the same level, not a harder and an easier version.
A student may take both the A and the B. What a student may not do is take two competitions on the same date — so AMC 10A and AMC 12A cannot be combined, but AMC 10A followed by AMC 12B is a legitimate combination. Sitting both dates gives a student two independent chances at an AIME-qualifying score.
Try these ideas on real AMC-style problems — free quiz, no account needed.
Explore AMC Prep →The 2026-27 competition dates
| Contest | Date |
|---|---|
| AMC 10 A & AMC 12 A | November 5, 2026 |
| AMC 10 B & AMC 12 B | November 13, 2026 |
| AMC 8 | January 21 – 27, 2027 (competition window) |
The AMC 8 is administered inside a week-long window rather than on a single fixed day, so the exact date depends on the school or organization hosting it. Registration is handled by the hosting institution, not by the student individually. Always confirm the current dates on the MAA's own registration page before making plans.
How AIME qualification actually works
The AIME — the American Invitational Mathematics Examination — is the next rung up, and it is invitational. You reach it through a qualifying score on the AMC 10 or AMC 12.
Here is the part that is widely misunderstood. There is no permanent qualifying score. The MAA's stated targets are the top 2.5% of AMC 10 scorers and the top 5% of AMC 12 scorers. The actual cutoff is set each year against that year's score distribution and published after the contests are scored. Older advice that circulates online — “you need a 120” “you need a 100” — describes a system of fixed floors that no longer governs qualification. Do not plan around a specific number you read in a forum post.
Notice also that the AMC 12's threshold is the more generous of the two in percentage terms, because the field taking the AMC 12 is older and stronger. A student eligible for both faces a real strategic decision, and there is no universal right answer to it.
Climbing the ladder
The three contests are not three unrelated tests. They are a progression, and the skills compound:
- AMC 8 rewards fluency and careful reading. Most of what stops a strong student here is arithmetic slips and misread conditions, not missing theory.
- AMC 10 introduces the machinery — counting and probability done properly, number theory, coordinate and synthetic geometry, and algebraic manipulation under time pressure.
- AMC 12 adds the precalculus layer: trigonometry, complex numbers, logarithms, sequences, and functions treated as objects rather than formulas.
The most reliable way through is unglamorous. Work real problems under real time limits, and then — this is the part students skip — read the full solution to every problem you missed, including the ones you guessed correctly. A right answer arrived at by luck is a problem you have not learned.
AMC Prep is now live on Texas CBE™
We have opened AMC Prep for all three contests at once: AMC 8, AMC 10, and AMC 12. Every question is written by us, modeled on the published contest format, and never copied from a released problem.
Two things about it are worth stating plainly, because they are the reason we built it.
Every question's answer has been independently verified. Not spot-checked. Each problem was re-solved from its statement alone, with the answer choices and the written explanation hidden, by a solver that had to reach the same result twice — once by derivation and once by direct computation — before the answer was accepted. Where a problem carries a diagram, it was solved from the numbers in the text rather than from the picture, so that a mis-drawn figure could never hide behind a right answer. A prep product whose answer key is wrong is worse than no prep product at all.
The explanations are written in a voice. Each worked solution is presented by a historical mathematician whose own work touches the topic — Ramanujan on number theory, Napier on logarithms, Cantor on sets. It is a small thing, but it turns a wall of algebra into something a thirteen-year-old will actually read.
Practice is organized by topic so a student can attack a specific weakness, and full-length timed mock exams run at contest pace — 40 minutes for AMC 8, 75 for AMC 10 and 12 — because pacing is a skill that only builds under the clock. There is a free quiz on every rung; you do not need an account to try it.
A note on names. Texas CBE™ is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by the Mathematical Association of America. “AMC,” “American Mathematics Competitions,” and “AIME” are trademarks of the MAA and are used here only to describe the contests our practice material prepares students for. Our questions are independently authored. Competition dates, rules, and qualification thresholds are set by the MAA and may change — always confirm them at the source before you rely on them.