Frequently Asked Questions

Yes. The COMC is Canada’s premier national mathematics competition that is open to any student with an interest in and grasp of high school math. All exams are marked and final scores are returned to the teacher.

To qualify as official participants, students and schools must meet the official Eligibility requirements, which includes writing the exam at an Official Competition Writing Centre (OCWC). Most conventional schools will be approved as Official Competition Writing Centres. 

New/Unassessed
All new organizations that have registered with us as well as existing organization (periodically) are assessed by CMS staff for suitability as OCWC locations. When you first register, you may see this status. For most conventional schools, it usually take a couple of days to assess your status.

Unofficial Only
If your school doesn’t meet our needs to be designated as an Official Competition Writing Centre, your account will show that your location status is “Unofficial-only.” If that’s your school’s situation, you have three options:

1. (Default) Your students could continue to participate as unofficial participants. This means that you’d still receive the exams in the morning on the date of the exam (via email as PDF files to print), and would supervise the exam for your students at your own location, and return the exams to us for marking. We’d release the results to you at the same time as all other schools. However, your students’ exams will be considered unofficial so they do not qualify for merit-based prizes or official recognition based on their results.
   
   2. You could find a nearby OCWC (usually another conventional school in your city) that would be willing to host your students for the writing of the competition. If your students write the competition at an OCWC and are proctored by a teacher affiliated with an OCWC, they would then be considered “official” participants and would qualify for merit-based prizes and official recognition. You would still order the exams and would be the only one receiving the detailed results for all your students, but the exams would be sent to the OCWC school and supervised by the people there. We’ll also email you a “teacher copy” on the Monday following the exam in case you want to work through it yourself or with your students the following week.
   
   3. If you have already paid for some exams and do not want to participate after all (unofficially, or at a nearby OCWC), then you can request a refund before the deadline.
   If you are a teacher or proctor whose school has been deemed unofficial-only, and you believe your school should be an Official Competition Writing Centre and have documentation that could reverse the status of your account (such as proof of Provincial education certification), please reach out to us at competitions@cms.math.ca

Temporarily Official
Schools who have been accepted as temporarily official for 2022: Organizations must have an unaffiliated provincially licensed teacher to proctor the exam. They must send us their education license, and be available to receive the exams and return the exams to the courier on the day after the exam takes place.

Beginning in 2018, CMS strengthened the requirements as to where students can write the COMC exam. In order for the results to be considered “official” and earn merit-based prizes and recognition, students need to write at an Official Competition Writing Centre (OCWC). All schools are assessed to see if we can approve them as an OCWC. Most conventional schools are already approved so returning schools will not see a difference. Schools that don’t meet our requirements can run the exam unofficially (but receive their exams digitally, rather than as paper copies), or be approved as temporarily official.

For more information, read this page.

You can contact us. Your location can become official if you have a proctor that is a certified teacher under the Ministry of Education or a Professor from a Canadian University that is not affiliated with your organization. If this is not an option, we’ll do our best to find a nearby school that we’ve certified as an Official Competition Writing Center. If that school is willing, your students could join theirs to write the competition.

For more information, read this page.

All registrations for the COMC must come from schools, through teachers or proctors. Individual students (and their parents) may ask any nearby school if they are participating in the COMC and if they are willing to add an exam in order to have the student participate at the school on exam day. The CMS has writing centres across Canada at our partner universities for students who cannot write in their own school. In 2022, writing centres may offer this as an option (in person only). The registration page will include this information when it is available.

There are no grade eligibility requirements for the COMC. However, the difficulty level of questions is based on the mathematics curriculum taught in Canadian senior secondary grades and CÉGEPs. Some questions require a degree of understanding beyond the curriculum. To see potential topics and past exam questions, visit the Getting Ready page.

Teachers will use an existing school account or create a new school account to place an exam order online. Exams are shipped to the school by courier.

A minimum of 3 digital (PDF) exams per school in Canada, and a minimum of 5 for paper copies. For international schools, a minimum of 8 exams applies to both paper and digital (PDF) exams.

Registration for print exams closes at 11:59 PST on Tuesday, October 11th. Registration for digital delivery closes at 11:59 PST on Sunday, October 23rd.