How courses work

Schedule

Athemath’s classes will be held in 3-month sessions. Each session will have six academic classes and six community-building events (CBEs). Academic class weeks and CBE weeks will alternate. Classes will be one hour in length, and each CBE will be forty minutes in length. Attendance is required for both classes and CBEs, and being habitually absent will result in removal from the program.

Classes will be strictly virtual for the 2023-2024 school-year, and will be held over Zoom. We will also make use of tools like Google Classroom and Discord for communication, distribution of problem sets, and submission of solutions.

Classes

Classes will be taught by female instructors who are distinguished in the field of contest math, such as olympiad qualifiers or Math Prize for Girls winners. There will be one class every two weeks, which will be followed by a handout and problem set for students to work on until the next class. Classes will be concluded with a test and Q&A session with the instructors. Each class will have five students.

To provide assistance for students to work on problems, we’ll provide weekly office hours for students to ask questions about the problem sets or any other math they’re working on.

For the 2023-2024 school year, our classes will be aimed from students close to qualifying for AIME up to students who can get a 5 on the AIME. They will be focused on one of the four primary contest subjects (algebra, number theory, geometry, combinatorics), or on specific problem-solving methods. Note that our courses are not intended to be a complete curriculum, but to supplement existing math practice. That doesn’t mean it’s not worth it—our courses still offer a rare opportunity to find mentors who can give students insider advice, to find peers and friends among the math community, and provide an introduction to solving harder math problems.

View the catalog of classes here.

Community-building events

Our six CBEs are designed to be enjoyable bonding experiences for students and teachers. In order, they are:

  1. X Countdown Round!
  2. Student Interviews
  3. Puzzle Hunt
  4. Problem Revenge
  5. Movie Night
  6. Q&A

These are not final and may be changed as we see fit.