Its no secret to me that the only reason The iTest even exists is because of the massive inadequacies of the current crop of national math competitions. If they did their job well, I would have no opportunity to do what I'm doing with the AHSIMC.

Math competitions fail at THEIR ONE AND ONLY GOAL: to bring as many students into the world of competitive mathematics as possible.

The major written math competition in the United States, the AMC-12, has approximately 120,000 students that participate from the US every year. This number bounces around, but has no consistent growth pattern...when it should be growing by leaps and bounds as society has renewed its focus on education, and math education in particular.

The primary reason it doesn't grow is because the exam is a qualifier, in a series of exams, for the International Mathematics Olympiad, a very prestigious international math event. However, its a very prestigious international math event that few can qualify for.

Thus, its a very prestigious international math event that few care about.

Ask fifty employers what the IMO is. None of them know? Then we have a failure on our hands.

But the AMC-12 exam actually does several things right, including having some crafty problem writers that do a good job in writing an exam that augments the curriculums of most schools. Most math competitions can't even do that right.

Then, you have the regional and national competitions to which school teams travel and participate against other schools from across the country. These also generally fail in the same mission of continued growth and aggressive pursuit of "fringe students" - the students who COULD become interested in competitive math, but simply don't because the image of these events is so poorly maintained or because the events are so poorly run.

The link below details one example of a "recreational event" that students can participate in who go to ARML (American Regions Math League; one of the more elite national math contests). Don't ask me how these administrators decided that a 30-second song length would make this event worth anyone's while, or how the absence of any prizes or incentives to participate would help draw student participation, or how this entire blurb is written so poorly that any team reading it and deciding whether or not to even go to this thing might just toss it in the garbage. Seriously, how hard would it have been to ask a student or two for suggestions on this? IMAGE...something that math competitions don't have, and something they really need like never before to draw new students to the fold.

http://www.artofproblemsolving.com/Forum/topic-34540.html
(This links to the Art of Problem Solving, a message board for students looking to learn more math. Some of these students attend ARML annually. I post on the board from time to time, and AHSIMC has a forum here for kids to discuss the competition.)

Major corporations and the mass media absolutely have to step in and get involved. The sooner the better.

Building the iTest is a gradual process. But if we don't substantially grow our participation numbers every year, until we have saturated the United States and have a presence at every single high school in the country, we are FAILURES. There's just not going to be a tolerance for any other outcome.