Purple Comet! Math Meet

It is genuinely free — the official rules state that the contest is free to all participants. There is no entry fee, no materials fee, and nothing to purchase. It is an online international team competition; in 2025 more than 12,000 students on over 4,000 teams from 80 countries took part. For an Irvine family, it is the most direct zero-cost way to give a child real experience solving problems as a team.

Yes. The rules only require each team to have an adult supervisor at least 21 years old who registers the team and supervises during the contest, and the organizers state that parents, relatives, family friends, or math club advisors all work fine — it does not have to go through a school. One adult may register multiple teams; some supervisors enter 30 or more. Team registration opens each February 1 and runs through the end of the competition.

Teams may have one to six students, so entering alone is allowed. Consider the workload though: the high school paper is 30 problems in 90 minutes and the middle school paper is 20 in 60, so the fewer the students, the tighter the time pressure — three or four is a practical minimum. The contest also sorts teams into categories by school size and how the team was formed, including large school, small school, multi-school or homeschool, and a non-competing open category, so a small school is not ranked directly against a large one.

You pick your own start time, which is the contest's most convenient feature. It runs inside a ten-day window in spring, and each team chooses when to begin within that window; once you start, the clock runs continuously — 90 minutes for high school, 60 for middle school. Registration opens February 1. Flexible as it is, do not leave it to the final day: allow margin for device or network problems and confirm your supervisor is free.

Calculators and computers are permitted, including spreadsheets, WolframAlpha, Mathematica, Maple, Desmos, and GeoGebra — one of the biggest rule differences between Purple Comet and the AMC. But using the internet to look up definitions or instructional material, or to search for how a problem is solved, is prohibited, and generative AI tools such as ChatGPT, Gemini, Copilot, and Claude may not be used to produce, explain, or verify answers. Brief the whole team beforehand so nobody breaks the rules unintentionally.

Both, easily — they complement each other. The AMC is an individual timed paper exam with no calculators, testing speed and technique. Purple Comet is an online team contest that permits computational tools and lets you choose your start time, testing division of labor and the skill of turning a problem into something you can compute. The calendars do not clash either: the AMC runs in fall, Purple Comet in spring, so many students treat it as a follow-on after the AMC season.

After the window closes, the site posts solutions and a list of winning teams, and supervisors can download scores, standings, and participation certificates from their admin page, with rankings given separately by category. There is no medal or scholarship tier. Be realistic about application value: it carries less weight than AMC or AIME results, but as an international contest spanning 80 countries, a strong placement within your category is legitimately worth listing in the Common App honors section.

Yes, there is a dedicated middle school division. It is for students who have not yet completed grade 8 or the local equivalent and are under 16. The high school division is for students who have not yet graduated from secondary school and are under 20. Middle school teams answer 20 problems in 60 minutes; high school teams answer 30 in 90. A strong middle schooler may enter the high school division instead, accepting the jump in volume and difficulty.