After getting an 118.5 on the AMC 10A last year, I qualified for this year's AIME. To prepare for the AIME, I tried looking at some of the problems from 2025 and 2024. It turned out that I could barely solve any of the problem. That's why I thought I was cooked for this year's AIME.
For the next few weeks, I decided to start taking one test every week, starting from 1983, so I could build up confidence and actually get some questions correct.
On the day of the test, my expectation was that I could get 3 to 4 questions right. But when I really started working on the problems, they turned out being really easy, at least a lot easier than the previous problems.
The first 5 problems were quite easy and I completed them quickly. Then I continued finishing questions 6 to 8. After question 8, the problems became so difficult that I couldn't even think of a way to approach them. Just when I was desperate, I saw question 15, and it was surprisingly easy to solve.
The whole test was 3 hours long, and I only had 15 problems to work with. So after finishing all problems that I could solve, I started drawing and writing random things, including names of small Japanese political parties. For the last 30 minutes, I pretty much slept until the bell rang.
Fast forward to a few weeks ago, the scores came out. I got 8 correct out of the 15 problems. It turned out that I missed question 6 unfortunately. Finally, out of the 270 contestants in Taiwan, I was in the top 41. There was one person who scored a 15, which is totally unbelievable.
Overall, it was a really fun experience to compete in the AIME. I hope I could still qualify for the AIME and do even better next year.
