HMMT: What the Harvard-MIT Math Tournament Actually Involves

So you’ve sat the AMC 12. Maybe AIME too, and the score came back respectable. What’s next?

For a lot of students on that track, HMMT is next: the Harvard-MIT Math Tournament, held every November at Harvard and every February at MIT, drawing close to 1,000 students each time.

It’s not a bigger AMC. The individual tests run at AIME-to-Olympiad difficulty, and two of the four rounds, Team and Guts, put you on a squad instead of alone with a bubble sheet.

That combination, harder math plus a team format you’ve never had to train for, decides whether HMMT is your next move or a year too soon.

Quick Facts: HMMT at a Glance

	November	February
Host	Harvard	MIT
Difficulty range	Mid-AMC to upper-AIME	Mid-AIME to Olympiad
Full team size	4–6 students	6–8 students
Team Round	60 min, 10 problems	60 min, 10 problems, proof-based
Individual tests	General round + Theme round	Algebra/NT, Combinatorics, Geometry, 50 min and 10 questions each
Guts Round	80 min, 36 problems in sets of 3, relay-style	80 min, 36 problems in sets of 4, relay-style

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What Is HMMT?

HMMT, the Harvard-MIT Math Tournament, is a high school math competition founded in 1998 and rebranded from its full name to just HMMT in 2019.

It runs twice a year, a November tournament at Harvard and a February tournament at MIT, each drawing close to 1,000 students including past IMO medalists.

The founders were Harvard and MIT students who wanted problems sharper than what their own high schools offered.

The November-to-February split has stuck ever since, and the two events aren’t interchangeable: they run at different difficulty levels, which the next sections cover directly. Full tournament rules and archives live on HMMT’s official site.

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Who Can Compete

Age and enrollment rules

HMMT sets eligibility two ways. You have to be under 21 on the day you compete, and you have to have been enrolled full-time in primary or secondary school as of the season’s registration start date, the year of the November tournament (which doubles as the year before the following February one).

That second rule catches some students off guard: it locks in based on where you were enrolled at registration. Where you happen to be enrolled by competition day doesn’t matter.

Team route vs. going unaffiliated

Most HMMT competitors arrive through a school team, and a coach has to lead that team’s application. That coach can be any responsible adult who’s willing to sign on: a teacher, a club advisor, a parent.

Schools aren’t capped at one team either. An organization can send up to 5 teams and 3 unaffiliated individuals to November, or 3 teams and 5 individuals to February.

No team at your school? You can still apply as an unaffiliated individual. You compete officially in every individual test that season, and HMMT places you onto an unofficial team, assembled the morning of the tournament with other unaffiliated students, for the Team and Guts rounds.

The catch: an unofficial team can’t win team awards, no matter how it scores. Going unaffiliated gets you into every round. It just doesn’t get you a shot at the team trophy.

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How HMMT Is Structured

Individual Tests

Individual testing isn’t the same both seasons. November runs a General round, covering the full spread of high school topics, and a Theme round built around one connecting theme for that year.

February trades those two for three subject-specific tests instead: Algebra/Number Theory, Combinatorics, and Geometry.

Each one runs 50 minutes with 10 questions, no calculator and no other computational aid allowed. Problems inside each February subject test climb as you go: the first few sit around AIME level, the last few reach USAMO territory.

You’re not expected to finish all 10. Scoring well on the ones you can solve beats rushing through all ten and guessing on the rest.

Team Round

The Team Round runs 60 minutes, 10 problems, one shared answer sheet for the whole team. February’s Team Round adds a wrinkle: it’s proof-based, so your team has to show why an answer is true, not just state it.

Coordinate badly and six strong individual scorers can still turn in a weak Team Round. It rewards the same skill a good group project does: knowing which teammate to hand which problem to.

The Guts Round

This is where the team format gets literal. Eighty minutes, 36 problems, split into sets of three in November and sets of four in February.

A runner from each team collects the first set, the team divides it up and solves it, then sends the runner back for the next set the moment they’re done. There’s no fixed schedule forcing anyone to wait. Speed and division of labor matter as much as the math itself.

Here’s the trade-off worth naming plainly: Gonit’s practice format, like most competition-math apps, is built for solo drilling. Grade-wise, topic-focused, one student working through 10,000-plus questions at their own pace.

That’s the wrong shape for training a Guts Round directly.

No app-based individual practice replicates the experience of splitting 36 rapid-fire problems across four to eight teammates against a shared clock, because that skill only exists once four to eight people are actually in a room together.

What solo practice on an app builds cleanly is the raw per-problem speed and accuracy each teammate needs before any of that coordination is worth attempting. Get fast and accurate on your own first. The team skill only shows up once everyone at the table already has that.

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How Hard Is HMMT, Really?

Difficulty isn’t uniform across the two tournaments. November sits from mid-AMC up through upper-AIME, the range covered in our AIME problems guide. February jumps higher: mid-AIME through Olympiad level, the same territory as the path mapped in how to qualify for the IMO in the USA.

Early problems in each HMMT round sit close to AIME difficulty. The last one or two in a set can reach USAMO or IMO shortlist territory.

If you’re weighing HMMT against other team-based invitationals, ARML is the closest comparison: also team-heavy, also aimed at grades 9-12, though its format and eligibility rules differ enough to check on their own.

Still deciding between AMC 10 and AMC 12 in the first place? Our AMC 10 vs AMC 12 guide is the better next stop before this one.

Where this matters for prep: if you’re still solving most AMC problems from memory instead of pattern, treat November HMMT as a stretch goal this cycle. If AIME problems feel like your normal difficulty rather than your ceiling, you’re already closer to ready than the difficulty range on paper implies.

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Registering for HMMT

Registration doesn’t work like AMC’s fixed test-day sign-up. HMMT runs an application window, typically about three weeks in September, then holds a lottery. Applying is free. Getting in isn’t guaranteed: after the deadline, HMMT selects teams and individuals from the applicant pool, and lottery results usually land one to two weeks later, sometimes closer to three.

Miss the initial cut and you’re not necessarily out. Waitlisted applicants can still get pulled in, with confirmation deadlines that have run around late October for November and late January for the February event.

If you win a spot, the fee is paid in cash or check at check-in, not online: figures posted on HMMT’s registration page put it at $80 per team and $10 per unaffiliated individual as of this writing.

Confirm the current window, deadlines, and fee before you plan around them. These details move year to year, and hmmt.org is the only source worth trusting on them.

Can’t get to Cambridge? HMMT also runs a separate Online Tournament for students who can’t travel, automated and open without a coach or advance registration. It uses the same style of problems but is a distinct event from the in-person November and February tournaments this guide covers.

No calculators, phones, or other computational aids are allowed in any round, individual or team. Bring pencils and plan on doing the arithmetic yourself.

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FAQ

Conclusion

HMMT isn’t the next box to check after AMC and AIME just because it comes later alphabetically in your search history. It’s a harder math test wrapped around a team sport, and the team part can’t be simulated alone.

If your school already runs a team, join it and start drilling the individual rounds now, since that part is fully in your control. If it doesn’t, apply unaffiliated: you’ll sit the same individual tests as everyone else, and an unofficial team picks up your Team and Guts scores.

Either way, build the underlying speed and accuracy first. Grade-wise practice on Gonit targets Algebra, Geometry, and Combinatorics problems at AIME level and up, the three subjects February’s individual tests split out on their own. Drill those solo until the easy and mid-difficulty problems stop costing you time, then go find a team.

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