Math summer camp for the gifted - admission criteria

Most students who apply to MathPath are enrolled in grades 6, 7, or 8 at the time of application, unless they are homeschooled. Only the age requirement applies.

The Age Requirement: Students should be in the age range of 11-14 years. Assuming that the first birthday of a person is the day they complete the age of one year, the student should not be 15 before the end of the camp, whereas the student should be 11 by the start date of camp. Since the camp begins on either the last Sunday of June or the first Sunday of July and ends on the fourth Sunday after, we use the following formula as the age requirement: The applicant's birthdate must fall on a date from July 30, Y-15, to June 30, Y-11, where Y means the year of the camp. The birthdate can fall exactly on July 30, Y-15, or June 30, Y-11. Exceptions are considered on a case-by-case basis, but no exception will be granted for students born earlier than July 30, Y-15.

Once you satisfy the age requirement, you must complete a number of problems on the Qualifying Test. See Application Procedure for details.

Students from anywhere in the world are eligible to apply. Over 80% of the student body is from US schools, the next group is Canadian, and the remainder made up of other nationalities.

Would I qualify?
The students we are looking for possess three mental attributes - they are smart, they love math, and they are persistent. Although students who become top scorers in national math contests possess all these three qualities, there are also students who either do not have the opportunity to appear for the contests - because their school does not offer them - or they do not like the fast-paced contest-type problem-solving. So how do we find out if you love math, and are smart and tenacious? We find out through your teacher's recommendation letter and your performance in the MathPath Qualifying Test. Take a month and try the Test problems. Most problems would take several days of thinking about them. Once you reach the answer, you would realize that you have it right. If you have answered at least four problems, you should be able to qualify. Your SAT or national contest scores are not considered by us.

And then there are those students who feel that they are indeed among the best students in the nation. So the parent might think "why not send my child to a high school camp?" We discuss this below.

Should I apply to MathPath or to a high school math summer program?
MathPath is more suitable for the profoundly gifted middle school age student because the program is tailored to this type of student. This means that you would find peers of the same age group as well as a program that is utterly challenging. Parents of some of these students may think that it is better to send them to a program for the gifted high school students because their youngster had "skipped" lower level math courses before and, similarly, a skipping to a high school program might be more beneficial. Prof. Thomas, who is the founder of both MathPath and the Canada/USA Mathcamp has this to say:

After establishing and running a high school summer program, I started MathPath for the profoundly gifted middle school students. The distribution curve of student ages in high school camps is a bell curve skewed to the right, with the median at 16 years. This means, there will be far more 18-year-olds than 14-year-olds at high school camps, and even less 13-year-olds. A scenario could be two 13-year-olds, five 14-year-olds, twenty 15-year-olds, forty 16-year-olds, thirty 17-year-olds, twenty 18-year-olds, and eight 19-year-olds, which makes it uncomfortable for the two youngest groups. At MathPath, the middle school students will have peers in the age range of 11 to 14 years. Secondly, while the highly gifted student benefits from the acceleration provided by skipping of middle school math courses, MathPath instruction - hyperbolic geometry, writing in mathematics, heuristics of problem solving, and proof methods - should not be skipped by these profoundly gifted students. MathPath is not acceleration but enrichment for the very gifted. Moreover, there is little overlap between the MathPath curriculum/training and that at summer programs for high school students.

Also see the page Why send your youngster to a math summer program.

MathPath encourages applications from girls and minority students. Whereas the US/Canada national population figures show that girls should comprise 50% of the camp enrollment and minorities - other than of oriental descent - at least 25%, the current figures at MathPath and many academic camps are only about 20% and 2%, respectively; this needs to improve. While every student at MathPath must qualify based solely on merit, we encourage teachers to ensure that their female and minority students also receive the information on MathPath.

MathPath - "BRIGHT AND EARLY"