Prepare with the right materials, at the right level.
Official past papers, the English–Chinese vocabulary that matters, and a study plan by grade band — with honest pointers to where the official materials live.
Official first, everything else around it.
The best preparation starts with the real thing. The official Math League site publishes past contests and sample problems, and those questions are the truest guide to the style, difficulty, and pacing your child will meet on the day. Working through genuine past papers — under the real time limit — is worth more than any third-party imitation.
The China-region rounds add their own materials. The semifinal, in particular, is an open-book round where students download the problems directly from the official site, so familiarity with that process matters as much as the mathematics. For the current cycle’s papers and instructions, follow the official guidance, or scan the WhatsApp QR code below and we will point you to the right place.
Be a little wary of third-party “practice packs” that promise to mirror the contest. Some are perfectly good; many are harder, easier, or simply off-style, and an hour on the wrong material is an hour not spent on the real thing. When in doubt, an official past paper is always the safer hour of practice.
A last word on official materials: they are usually free. Part of the value of pointing you to the source rather than selling a “prep pack” is that the best practice your child can do costs nothing but time. We would always rather you spend an afternoon on a genuine past paper than money on an imitation of one — and most of what a well-prepared student needs is already published, waiting to be worked through carefully.
Three phases, however long you have.
The same shape works whether you start months ahead or weeks ahead — the phases just compress.
The fundamentals
Close any gaps in the core topics for your band, and learn the English vocabulary. Don’t time anything yet — make the underlying mathematics solid and unhurried first.
Real papers, timed
Work through official past contests under the real clock, with no calculator. Get used to the pace, the question style, and the discipline of moving on from a problem that isn’t coming.
And refine
This is where the gains hide. Re-do the problems that went wrong, understand why, and turn each mistake into a habit that prevents the next. Reviewing well beats simply doing more.
What to drill, level by level.
The bands build on one another, so the right practice depends on where your child sits. Prepare for the band they will actually take.
Drill mental arithmetic, fractions and decimals, simple geometry, and word problems. At this level the win comes from being fast and not making careless slips under a thirty-minute clock.
Move into ratios and percentages, the first algebra, introductory geometry, and basic number theory. Practice recognizing which tool a problem wants — the paper is faster and less mechanical.
Cover algebra, geometry, trigonometry, and pre-calculus. Because the high-school rounds are short-answer, practise producing exact answers rather than eliminating options — and sustaining it across a six-contest season.
English math terms, learned in advance.
The preliminary provides an English–Chinese sheet, so nothing has to be memorized — but a student who already knows the terms reads faster and thinks more clearly under time pressure. These are worth knowing cold.
So treat the vocabulary as something to learn before the day, not look up on it. Make sure your child is comfortable in English with the words for operations, shapes, number properties, and the common problem phrasings — none of it is advanced, but all of it is faster when it is already familiar. The four groups below are the ones worth having down cold before the first paper.
A simple way to build the habit: each time your child meets an unfamiliar English term while practising, add it to a short personal list and review it weekly. Within a month or two the contest’s language stops being a hurdle and becomes invisible, and the student can spend their thirty minutes on the mathematics rather than on translation.
Operations
sum, difference, product, quotient, remainder
Geometry
perimeter, area, vertex, parallel, perpendicular
Numbers
prime, factor, multiple, consecutive, digit
Phrasing
at most, at least, how many, in terms of
Habits that actually move the needle.
Math League rewards understanding, so practice should too. The most common mistake is doing many problems quickly and never looking back; the students who improve fastest do fewer problems and review them harder. After every timed paper, sort the questions into three piles — got it, got it slowly, got it wrong — and spend your time on the last two.
Practise without a calculator from the start, because the preliminary does not allow one. Train the arithmetic so it is not the bottleneck, and learn the small shortcuts good problem-solvers use: estimating to check an answer, working with nice numbers, and recognizing a familiar shape inside an unfamiliar problem.
One habit pays off out of all proportion to the effort: practising the act of skipping. The gap between a good result and a frustrating one is often a single hard question that quietly swallowed five minutes. Teach your child to mark it, move on, and come back — the score rewards eight problems finished calmly far more than one wrestled to the ground.
And keep the stakes in proportion. For most students, the real prize is not a certificate but the habit of thinking clearly under a little pressure — a habit that outlasts any single contest and helps in every subject that asks for careful reasoning. Prepare seriously, but keep it enjoyable; a student who comes to dread the practice rarely does their best work on the day.
Preparation questions.
Where can I find official past papers?
How long should my child prepare?
Do they need to memorize the vocabulary list?
Should we practise without a calculator?
What is the single most useful thing to do?
Where do I get this season’s specific materials?
Want this season’s materials?
Scan to ask us on WhatsApp where to find the current papers, the vocabulary sheet, and the right practice for your child’s grade band.
