How AMC scores, cut-offs and honors work

How the scoring works

The AMC 8 is marked simply: you earn 1 point for each correct answer and 0 points for a question left blank or answered incorrectly. There is no penalty for a wrong answer, so it always pays to attempt every question. With 25 questions, the maximum score is 25.

The AMC 10 and AMC 12 use a scheme that rewards leaving a question blank over guessing: +6 points for each correct answer, +1.5 points for each question left blank, and 0 points for a wrong answer. Because there are 25 questions, the maximum score is 150. The 1.5-point credit for a blank means a careful student who skips a few of the hardest questions is not punished for it.

Award and honor levels

After marking, the MAA recognises the strongest performances with a set of awards. The exact percentile boundaries are recalculated each year from the full field of scores, so the levels below describe what each award represents rather than a fixed number of points.

Competition	Award	What it recognises
AMC 8	Perfect Score	A full 25 out of 25
AMC 8	Honor Roll of Distinction	Top 1% of all participants
AMC 8	Distinction	Top 5% of all participants
AMC 8	Top 10%	Among the top 10% of participants
AMC 8	Top 25%	Among the top 25% of participants
AMC 8	Achievement Roll	A strong score by a student in grade 6 or below
AMC 10 / 12	Honor Roll of Distinction	The very top scorers on the paper
AMC 10 / 12	Distinction	A high score above the published threshold
AMC 10 / 12	Achievement Roll	A strong score by a student below the standard grade for the paper

AIME qualification

The highest scorers on the AMC 10 and AMC 12 are invited to sit the AIME — the American Invitational Mathematics Examination, the next round on the pathway to the USA(J)MO. Qualification is by score: roughly the top few per cent of each paper earn the invitation. If a student sits more than one paper, the best of the A and B scores is used to decide the invitation, so taking both papers can only help. You can read more about the invitational round on our AIME & USA(J)MO instructions page.

When results come out

Scores are not instant. For the AMC 8, results are typically available about four weeks after the exam. Official digital certificates for award winners are issued roughly six to eight weeks after the competition. Your test centre or registration channel releases individual scores once the MAA has finished processing the full field.

About the cut-offs. Exact cut-off scores are set and published by the MAA each year. They are not fixed: the thresholds for Distinction, the Honor Roll of Distinction and AIME qualification are recalculated from each season’s results, and they differ between the A and B papers and between the AMC 10 and AMC 12. Treat any figure from a previous year as a guide only, and check the official numbers for the season you are sitting.