SASMO Preparation: Singapore and Asian Schools Guide
SASMO sets grade-specific papers in the Singapore tradition, where representing the problem correctly matters more than computing quickly.
SASMO preparation trains a habit that most competition coaching skips entirely: setting the problem up properly before touching a calculation. In the Singapore tradition that is not a preliminary step, it is most of the work.
Grade-specific papers, which changes everything
SASMO sets a separate paper for each grade. A Class 6 student sits a Class 6 paper and is ranked against other Class 6 students.
This sounds administrative and is actually significant. In competitions that band several years together, a younger student meets questions pitched at older students and a modest result says nothing useful. Here the result is a real signal, and that makes SASMO a better diagnostic than most competitions at this age.
Two sections, and the second one decides it
The paper opens with multiple-choice questions covering familiar topics at competition depth. These should be worked briskly; they are not where the paper is won.
The second section contains non-routine problems worth considerably more marks each. "Non-routine" is the operative word: these problems do not indicate which method they want, and several will look unlike anything the student has seen.
The commonest failure in SASMO preparation is a student who treats both sections at the same pace, spends too long polishing section one, and arrives at the valuable problems with ten minutes left.
Represent before you compute
The Singapore approach places unusual weight on asking what a problem is actually describing before calculating anything.
In practice that means: can this be drawn? Does naming a quantity turn a wordy condition into one clean equation? Does a small case reveal the pattern that the general case is hiding?
Students trained to spot numbers and start manipulating them find non-routine problems impossible, not because the mathematics is beyond them but because they are computing the wrong thing confidently. We spend real session time on setup alone, including on problems the student could eventually grind through unaided, because the setup is the transferable skill.
Model drawing
The bar model is the best-known Singapore technique and it is worth learning even for students who will never sit a Singapore paper again.
The idea is simple: represent each quantity as a bar, and represent the relationships between them as relationships between the bars. A problem about three people sharing money in a ratio, with one of them spending some and the remainder being equal, is genuinely confusing in words and almost trivial as a picture.
Students from other school systems usually have not met it and benefit most from learning it, because it gives them a reliable first move on any word problem that currently makes them freeze.
What to cover
The topic spread is the standard middle school competition set: number sense and divisibility, fractions and ratio, algebra at an introductory level, geometry and area, and counting.
Counting deserves separate mention because it is where the non-routine problems concentrate and where school preparation is weakest. Students who want to go considerably deeper will find our combinatorics course covers the systematic methods these problems reward.
What differs from a conventional course is that every topic is practised on problems that do not say which topic they belong to. That is the whole point: a student who knows ratio only when a question says "ratio" has not learned ratio.
What "setting it up" means in practice
This phrase gets used loosely, so it is worth making concrete.
Take a problem that describes several people exchanging items under conditions, ending with everyone holding an equal number. A student who starts by assigning letters to seven unknowns and writing six equations will probably get there, slowly, with several chances to slip.
A student who sets it up first asks a different question: what stays the same throughout? The total number of items never changes, so the final equal amount is the total divided by the number of people, and the problem has mostly solved itself. No algebra was required.
That move — looking for what is conserved before manipulating anything — is one of perhaps six setup habits that cover most non-routine problems at this level. They are learnable, and teaching them is the core of SASMO preparation.
Reading the question as written
A related discipline, and a cheap source of marks. SASMO problems are stated carefully, and the condition that makes a problem interesting is usually mentioned once, plainly, in the middle of a sentence.
Students who skim for numbers miss it and then solve a problem the paper did not ask. We practise stating what is given and what is asked, aloud, before any work starts. It feels slow for a fortnight and then saves time permanently.
How it compares with the other options
How it compares with the other options
Among competitions at this level, SASMO is the one that most directly trains problem representation. Math Kangaroo is more visual and more playful, AMC 8 is faster and more conventional, and SMOPS and SMO Junior run in the same Singapore tradition at a higher difficulty.
A student who takes well to SASMO is usually well suited to the Singapore pathway, and SMOPS is the natural next step. One who finds the non-routine section frustrating may be happier starting with Kangaroo and returning later.
A realistic expectation
Non-routine problems are, by design, problems a student has not been taught to do. The first few months of SASMO preparation therefore involve a lot of being stuck, and families should expect that rather than read it as failure.
What changes is the response. A student who initially freezes on an unfamiliar problem learns, over a year, to reach for a repertoire: draw it, try a small case, name the unknown, look for what is being conserved. They still do not recognise the problem. They simply have somewhere to start, and that is the whole skill.
Dates, eligibility and registration are set by the organisers each year and vary by country. Confirm the current cycle with SASMO before planning around it.
Questions people ask
What is SASMO?
The Singapore and Asian Schools Math Olympiad, an international competition written by students across Asia and beyond. Its defining feature is that papers are set separately for each grade, so a Class 6 student is judged against other Class 6 students rather than against a wide band.
How is the paper structured?
Two sections. The first is multiple choice and covers familiar ground at competition depth. The second contains non-routine problems that carry more marks each and are where the paper is really decided. Students who spend too long in section one leave themselves short for the part that matters.
What is the Singapore problem style?
Non-routine, meaning the problem does not announce which method it wants. The tradition places unusual weight on representing the situation correctly before any calculation, often with a diagram or a bar model. A student who starts computing immediately usually computes the wrong thing.
What is model drawing and does it still matter at this level?
It is the Singapore technique of drawing bars to represent quantities and their relationships. It is taught in primary school there and it remains genuinely useful at competition level, because it converts a tangled word problem into a picture whose answer can often be read off directly. Students from other systems rarely know it and benefit most from learning it.
When is SASMO held?
It is normally written once a year, with registration through schools or approved centres and arrangements varying by country. Check the SASMO organisers for the current cycle, since dates and eligibility are set each year.
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