For those of you who don’t work with high-achieving middle school and high school math students, you might have missed the fact that we are getting into the thick of contest season right now.

MATHCOUNTS has moved on to the Chapter round (I think that “Chapter” is a fancy word for “regional”). And tomorrow is the AMC10/12A. The students are freaking. the. heck. out.

You might not know the AMC10/12 contests. Back in my day, the contest was called the AHSME, and the only reasons that I took it were because we were offered bonus points for participating, and it was usually held at a time that conflicted with an unpleasant class. These days it is part of the blood sport known as competitive college admissions.

Tomorrow there might be ice storms and bad weather in various places in the country with both uptight students and weather. Top math students around the country and doing the reverse snow day ritual, begging and pleading whatever divine powers there might be for there to not be a snow day. All students must take the AMC10/12A on the same day. If your school is closed and you can not find some sort of mythical math contest oasis that will take you in, you have missed your chance.

Sure, there is the AMC10/12B, which is on the 15th, but the best students take both the A and the B versions of the exam to maximize their chances of moving on to the next round of the contest and then the round after that and then the training camp and then the year of testing and, finally, eventually qualifying for the International Mathematical Olympiad.

The rumor mill says that you need to score very well on this series of contests in order to be admitted to a selective college.

One of the ways that I can horrify students today with how old I am is to tell them that I never even bothered to study for the AHSME. I just walked in and took it. And I qualified for the AIME (the next contest in the sequence). And get this—I didn’t bother to include any of my math contest scores on my college applications, and I was still able to attend an Ivy League college.

They view this story with the same level of disbelief as when I tell people (and this is true!) that when I was in high school, there was an indoor smoking room for students. (It is probably less shocking if I add that it was for seniors only, and they needed to be 18 and have their parents’ permission. Also that the school did away with it after my freshman year. After that, only teachers could still smoke indoors at school.)