Dear teachers, parents and students,
With the competition landscape constantly evolving, we’re changing how the COMC is being administered in the following ways:
Division names
The current Canadian and International divisions will be replaced by:
Competitive Division
Global Division
Competitive and Global divisions
A student will be placed in the Competitive Division only if all of the following apply:
the student otherwise qualifies as an official contestant;
the student is a Canadian citizen or permanent resident, or writes the competition at a Canadian school or designated university; and
the student begins writing between 1:00 p.m. and 3:30 p.m. EDT (UTC-4) on Thursday, October 29th (in Canada) and finishes no more than 2.5 hours after beginning.
All other official contestants will be placed in the Global Division.
Only students in the Competitive Division will be eligible for prize money and potential invitations to the CMO.
Student Answer Booklets
The Problem Set (the questions themselves) will no longer appear in the Student Answer Booklets. Read below for more about that.
The individually QR-coded booklets will instead contain:
the front cover with the student’s name pre-printed and three questions (age check; citizenship; email);
spaces of varying length for student responses to each question;
back cover
This format will apply to both shipped examinations and downloadable PDF examinations.
Writing dates
Students in the Americas will continue to write on Thursday, while students overseas will continue to write on Friday, based on local time.
An overseas student may write during the Competitive Division time window if the student otherwise qualifies for that division and can register as an independent student directly with CMS.
Release of Problem Set (the questions)
The questions will be provided separately from the student booklet, as one PDF or as separate PDFs. *This also applies to orders of shipped exams. To be clear, shipped exams will now only have the student answer booklets shipped, and proctors will need to access the PDF containing the Problem Set to print them off at the school or organization.
For schools in the North and South Americas, the Problem Set PDF will become available to proctors at 12:00 noon EDT on Thursday, through your portal. This is one hour before the earliest permitted Competitive Division start time.
Overseas schools will receive access at 3:30 p.m. EDT on Thursday, corresponding to approximately 8:30 a.m. Friday in Auckland, New Zealand.