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; and
the student begins writing between 1:00 p.m. and 3:30 p.m. EDT (UTC-4) 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.
Student response booklets
Competition questions will no longer appear in the student response booklets.
The booklets will instead contain:
the cover and back pages;
instructions;
QR codes; and
designated spaces for responses to each question.
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 Thursday Competitive Division time window if the student otherwise qualifies for that division and can register as an independent student directly with CMS.
Release of examination questions
The questions will be provided separately from the response 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 response sheets shipped, and proctors will need to access the PDF containing the questions to print them off at the school or organization.
For schools in the North and South Americas, the question PDF will become available to proctors at 12:00 noon EDT on Thursday, either through a secure download or by email from CMS staff. 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.