How to Crack AMC 10 in 2 Months: An 8-Week Plan

You have eight weeks. That is not enough time to become a different mathematician, and any guide that promises otherwise is selling something. But it is enough time to crack AMC 10 in 2 months if you accept one uncomfortable fact first: most students who miss the AIME cutoff do not miss it because the mathematics defeated them. They miss it because they lost marks they had already earned.

This is a working plan, not a pep talk. It assumes you know school algebra and geometry, that you can give it six to ten hours a week, and that you would rather be told the truth about what eight weeks can and cannot do.

The target is now a fixed number, and that changes everything

From the 2026-27 cycle the Mathematical Association of America has replaced the old percentile cutoffs with fixed AIME qualification thresholds. On the AMC 10 that number is 100 points. On the AMC 12 it is 85.

Under the old system a student could score 103 and still miss out, because the cutoff was set after the fact from the national distribution and sometimes landed at 105. That is over. One hundred qualifies. You now have a fixed finish line you can aim at from day one, which is the single most useful change to AMC preparation in years.

So what does 100 actually require? The AMC 10 is 25 questions in 75 minutes, scored 6 points for a correct answer, 1.5 for a blank, and 0 for a wrong one. Work the arithmetic:

• 17 correct, 8 blank = 102 + 12 = 114 points
• 16 correct, 9 blank = 96 + 13.5 = 109.5 points
• 15 correct, 10 blank = 90 + 15 = 105 points
• 14 correct, 11 blank = 84 + 16.5 = 100.5 points

Read that last line again. Fourteen correct answers and eleven blanks clears the AIME threshold. You do not need to answer the hard half of the paper. You need fourteen questions you are certain about, and the discipline to leave the rest alone.

That reframing is what makes eight weeks realistic. You are not trying to master questions 21 to 25. You are trying to make questions 1 to 16 automatic. Every student who has managed to crack AMC 10 in 2 months has done it by narrowing the target this way rather than by widening it.

Why capable students score 85 instead of 105

Before building a plan, understand what you are actually fixing. Marks are lost in five ways, and only one of them is a mathematics problem:

1. Concept gap — you genuinely did not know the technique. This is the only category that needs new teaching.
2. Careless slip — right method, wrong arithmetic. A sign error, a dropped factor of two.
3. Slow method — you got it right, by the long route, and it cost you two questions elsewhere.
4. Misread — you answered a question accurately. It was not the question that was asked.
5. Poor selection — you spent nine minutes on question 22 while questions 12 and 14 sat blank.

When students actually classify their mistakes this way, most discover that concept gaps are a minority of their lost marks. A student scoring in the high 80s is typically losing six to twelve marks a paper to slips and selection — and twelve marks is exactly the distance between 88 and 100.

This matters enormously when you only have eight weeks. If you spend those weeks learning new topics while still dropping ten marks a paper to carelessness, you will finish the sprint at roughly the score you started with. The fastest gains in a short window come from plugging leaks, not from adding material — which is why any serious attempt to crack AMC 10 in 2 months has to begin with a diagnosis rather than a syllabus.

The skip-or-guess table, computed

The 1.5 points for a blank is the most misunderstood number in the competition, and getting it wrong costs real marks. Here is the expected value of a guess, worked out rather than asserted. With k options remaining, a uniform guess is worth 6/k:

A wild guess with nothing eliminated averages 1.20 against the 1.50 you already had for free. Guess wildly on nine questions and you throw away about 2.7 points — small, until you finish on 98.

The rule is simple: eliminate two options or leave it blank. One elimination is a coin flip in expectation; two is where guessing starts genuinely paying.

Weeks 1 and 2: find out what is actually wrong

Do not start by studying. Start by measuring.

Sit one full past paper under real conditions on day one — 75 minutes, no calculator, no phone, no pausing. Then mark it and classify every wrong and blank answer into the five categories above. This is the most important two hours of the entire eight weeks, and almost nobody does it.

You now have a number and a diagnosis. A student at 72 whose errors are 70% concept gaps needs a completely different eight weeks from a student at 88 whose errors are 70% slips and selection. Same score band, opposite plans.

For the rest of these two weeks, work through the four syllabus areas at a diagnostic level rather than a teaching one — the AMC 10 syllabus covers algebra, counting and probability, number theory, and geometry, all short of trigonometry and logarithms. Twenty problems per area, untimed, marking not just right and wrong but how long each took. Anything over four minutes is a slow method even when the answer is correct.

Open an error log now. One row per missed question: the question, the cause category, and the one sentence you would tell yourself next time. You will review it weekly, and by week six it will be the most valuable document you own.

Weeks 3 to 5: close the gaps that pay

Now teach yourself the material — but in priority order set by the log, not by a textbook's chapter order.

The marks live in questions 11 to 20. Questions 1 to 10 you can already do; 21 to 25 you will not reliably crack in eight weeks. So every hour goes into the middle band. In practice that means:

• Algebra — Vieta's relations, systems, sequences, functional equations, and the symmetric-substitution patterns that appear year after year
• Counting and probability — complementary counting first, since "at least one" problems are the most common single trap; then combinations, stars and bars, expectation
• Number theory — modular arithmetic, divisor counting, digit problems. High yield relative to how little school teaches it
• Geometry — power of a point, similar triangles, and knowing when a coordinate setup turns a hard synthetic problem into routine algebra

Work in sets of eight to ten problems, timed at three minutes each. When a problem beats you, read the solution, close it, and redo the problem from scratch the next day. Reading a solution and nodding is not learning; reproducing it cold is.

Keep one session a week purely for the error log. Re-attempt every question you missed the previous week. If you miss it twice, it is a genuine concept gap and belongs in your next teaching block.

Weeks 6 and 7: full papers under real conditions

Two complete timed papers a week, and treat them as sacred: 75 minutes, no calculator, no restarts. Our AMC 10 practice papers include fifteen full papers with 425 questions and a worked solution for every one, three of them free.

Use a fixed time budget and rehearse it until it is automatic:

• Questions 1-10 — 20 minutes. If you are over 25, accuracy is the problem, not speed.
• Questions 11-20 — 35 minutes. This is where the paper is won.
• Questions 21-25 — 15 minutes, scanning for the one that happens to suit you.
• Final 5 minutes — check questions 1-10 only. That is where a careless slip costs the same six points as a hard question, and it is far easier to catch.

After each paper, classify every miss again. By now the pattern should be obvious and repetitive — that is the point. If your log says "careless, careless, misread, careless", then no amount of extra geometry will help you, and a checking routine will.

Week 8: taper, do not cram

The last week is not for new material. Nothing learned in the final seven days survives contact with a timed paper.

• One full paper early in the week, then stop taking full papers
• Re-read the error log end to end — this is the highest-value hour of the week
• Twenty minutes a day on questions 1 to 10 from old papers, purely for accuracy and speed
• Decide your skip rule in advance and write it down: which questions you will attempt, when you will abandon one, and what "two eliminations" means for you
• Sleep properly for the three nights before. This is not filler advice — the paper is 75 minutes of sustained attention and fatigue shows up as exactly the careless slips you spent eight weeks eliminating

The 2026-27 dates you are working towards

• AMC 10A — Thursday 5 November 2026
• AMC 10B — Friday 13 November 2026
• Registration closes — 15 October 2026 (late deadline 28 October)
• AIME I and II — 5 and 6 February 2027

Sit both the A and the B paper. Only the higher score counts toward AIME qualification, so the second sitting is effectively a free retake with eight days of extra preparation built in. Students who enter only one paper give away a real advantage for no reason.

One practical warning that catches out well-prepared students every year: the MAA does not register individual students. Entry runs through a school or an approved test centre with a competition manager. If your school does not offer the AMC 10, finding a centre takes time — start that in week one, not week seven.

What two months can and cannot do

Being straight with you: eight weeks is a sprint, not a full preparation. Six to twelve months produces stronger results, and if you have that time you should use it.

What eight weeks reliably does is convert a student who could score 100 into one who does. If your baseline paper lands between 75 and 95, the gap is almost entirely accuracy, pacing and question selection — and those genuinely respond to eight focused weeks. If your baseline is below 60, the honest answer is that the concept gaps are too wide to close by November, and you should target next year's cycle while sitting this one for the experience.

The plan above works because it refuses to spread effort evenly. It puts everything into the middle band of the paper, treats blanks as a scoring tool rather than a failure, and fixes the leaks before adding new material. That ordering is what makes the difference in a short window, and it is the whole reason it is possible to crack AMC 10 in 2 months at all.