COMC 2018: Official Competition Writing Centres (OCWC)

New for 2018

Official participation in the COMC can lead to prize money, invitations to higher-level competitions with greater national or international prestige, and recognition by universities during admissions and scholarship considerations. Therefore, the Canadian Mathematical Society is strengthening the requirements for organizations to receive and administer the COMC exams in an approved location.

When you log into your Teacher account, your main menu shows your Location Status and your COMC 2018 Exam Status.

For the vast majority of participating schools, you are already approved as an Official Competition Writing Centre (OCWC). That means you’d receive the exams, supervise the students and enforce the rules, then return the exams to our university marking partners just as you likely did in previous years.

All students remain welcome to write the exam. If your school doesn’t meet our needs to be designated as an official writing centre, then your account will show that your location status is “Unofficial-only.” You have three options:

1. This is the path assumed unless you contact us to pursue a different option below.
   You could continue to participate as Unofficial participants. This means that you’d still receive the exams, supervise it for your students at your own location, and return the exams to us for marking as you may have done in previous years. We’d release the results to you at the same time as all other schools. However, your student’s exams will be considered unofficial so they do not qualify for merit-based prizes or official recognition based on their results.
2. You could contact us to try to find a nearby OCWC (usually another conventional school in your city) that would be willing to host your students for the writing of the competition. Then your students would be considered “official” participants and would qualify for merit-based prizes and official recognition. You would still order the exams and would be the only one receiving the detailed results for all your students, but the exams would be sent to the writing centre and supervised by the staff there. We’ll also email you a “teacher copy” on the Monday following the exam in case you want to work through it yourself or with your students afterwards.
3. If you have already paid for some exams and do not want to participate after all (unofficially, or at a nearby OCWC), then we can issue you a full refund if you contact us before the exams are shipped.