Thirteen students sat the Junior Mathematical Olympiad with Exact Science. Eight earned medals on a fully written proof paper — and the preparation on problems.cc is the part worth understanding.
You can do well in the Junior Mathematical Challenge with speed and strong school maths.
The Junior Mathematical Olympiad is a different test.
Since 2025, it has been a fully written paper — six questions, proofs expected, no multiple choice to hide behind. Medals are earned slowly. That is why I care about this result.
This year, 13 students sat the JMO with Exact Science — invited from a larger Junior Mathematical Challenge cohort. Eight earned medals: 3 Gold, 3 Silver, 2 Bronze.
I am proud of the medal winners. I am also glad the other five sat the paper at all.
What the result actually says
The JMO does not reward the student who recognises the type fastest.
It rewards the student who can set up an argument, justify each step, and stay coherent when the question refuses to look familiar.
That is a different skill from JMC. And it takes deliberate practice.
Here is the result in one view:
| Award | Count |
|---|---|
| Students who sat the JMO | 13 |
| Gold awards | 3 |
| Silver awards | 3 |
| Bronze awards | 2 |
Eight medals from thirteen students on a selective olympiad paper is a strong outcome. But the number I keep coming back to is not the medal count — it is the proof quality underneath it.
The rest of the cohort
Roughly five students sat but did not medal.
I would not treat that as a failure story. The JMO is selective. Proof writing is hard. Many strong JMC students discover, on their first written olympiad paper, that they can see the answer but cannot yet explain it cleanly.
Sitting the paper, writing full attempts, and learning where the argument breaks — that is real progress. It just does not always show up as a medal on the first try.
How we prepared on problems.cc
We did not prepare by printing random past papers and hoping the right type appeared.
Earlier this year we published how we clustered the historical JMO written corpus into practice sets on problems.cc — reasoning habits, not topic labels. Our students used those sets in the run-up to June:
- JMO Mixed Practice — a balanced entry point
- JMO Geometry Proofs
- JMO Number Theory
- JMO Algebra & Sequences
- JMO Combinatorics & Logic
- JMO Proof Push
Full past papers remain on the JMO past papers hub. The method behind the sets is in our earlier post on what JMO written problems are really testing.
The point is not volume. It is targeted proof practice — one cluster at a time, with review that asks "where did the argument actually start?"
A field note from this cohort
One pattern I see often: a student who flies through JMC-style questions but freezes when asked to write a proof from cold.
The fix is rarely "do more papers." It is usually narrower — pick one reasoning habit, write one proof, then rewrite it until the logic is visible on the page.
A student in this group started with Mixed Practice, then moved into Geometry Proofs because angle-chasing was fine but justification was thin. By the time they sat the real paper, they were not guessing structure. They were choosing it.
That is the shift the JMO demands.
What I would tell parents after a result like this
Do not measure JMO preparation by how many past papers a child has printed.
Measure it by whether they can write a proof and review it honestly.
Use the Junior Mathematical Olympiad page to understand the format. Use olympiads.co.uk for the wider UKMT pathway. And if your child has an invitation, start with one problem from problems.cc this week — write the proof, then pick the cluster that hurts most.
Congratulations to our medal winners. And respect to every student who sat a hard written paper and came back knowing more about how they think.