Putnam & Competitions
Competition math, treated as a puzzle, not a test.
Tulane Math Club's Putnam prep is open to everyone, regardless of background. We work through problems together, take it slow, and celebrate clever ideas, including the wrong ones.
The basics
What is the Putnam?
The William Lowell Putnam Mathematical Competition is an annual six-hour exam taken by undergraduates across the United States and Canada. Twelve short problems, no calculators, lots of cleverness, and a long, weird tradition of being humbling for everyone, including future Fields medalists.
You don't need to be a math major to take it, and you don't need to expect a high score to enjoy it. The Tulane Math Club Putnam Prep meets weekly to work through the kinds of problems and techniques that show up, in a small-group format that makes it easy to ask anything.
Quick facts
- When: First Saturday of December
- Format: Two 3-hour sessions, 12 problems total
- Who: Any Tulane undergraduate
- Cost: Free; Tulane covers it
Start here
If you've never done competition math before
A short on-ramp. Skim it, then come to a prep session.
Read one problem
Pick any Putnam A1 from the past ten years. A1s are the friendliest. Try it for 20 minutes, no Googling.
Don't aim to solve
Aim to notice. Write down everything you observe about the problem. Ideas count more than answers.
Come to a session
Bring what you wrote. We'll work the problem together, and you'll already have something to contribute.
Fall semester
Weekly prep schedule
Topics rotate; mock Putnams give you a low-stakes run before the real thing.
- Week 1Welcome session: Putnam, demystified
- Week 2Inequalities & clever substitutions
- Week 3Combinatorics & counting tricks
- Week 4Number theory: GCDs, mods, and Bezout
- Week 5Functional equations
- Week 6Mock Putnam (A session)
- Week 7Generating functions
- Week 8Mock Putnam (B session)
Practice problem of the week
Find all positive integers n such that n divides 2ⁿ + 1.
Try it. Sketch a couple of small cases. Bring whatever you find to the next prep session, even if it's a dead end.
Past problem archive
We're building a curated archive of past Putnam problems organized by topic and difficulty, with hints rather than full solutions. Coming soon.
Browse archive (coming soon)COMAP / MCM
Mathematical Contest in Modeling
A weekend-long applied math competition. Teams of three pick one open-ended real-world problem and write a paper. We help form teams and host a mixer in October.
Find a team