Your child has done a contest or two alone and now wants to try one with friends. Then you check the school: no math team, nobody on staff with time to start one, and every team competition you can find wants a school registration and a coach.
The Purple Comet Math Meet needs neither. It is free, it runs online, and it is open to middle and high school students anywhere in the world. The 2027 contest runs from April 6 to April 15. The adult who supervises a team doesn’t have to be a teacher, and parents often take the job. It is designed for teams of up to six, and the official FAQ warns that students who compete alone “should not expect to complete many of the contest problems in the allotted time.”
The Purple Comet Math Meet at a Glance
The Purple Comet Math Meet is a free online team competition for middle and high school students, held every year since 2003. Teams of one to six students solve 20 problems in 60 minutes in the middle school contest, or 30 problems in 90 minutes in the high school contest. Every answer is a whole number, typed into the contest website.
| Middle school contest | High school contest | |
|---|---|---|
| Who enters | Teams where every student is in grade 8 or below | Any team with a student past grade 8 (middle schoolers may enter too) |
| Problems and time | 20 problems in 60 minutes | 30 problems in 90 minutes |
| Topics | Arithmetic, elementary algebra and geometry, simple counting and probability, primes and divisibility | Adds advanced algebra, combinatorics, trigonometry, conic sections and functions |
| Calculus? | No | No |
| Cost | Free | Free |
The 2027 contest runs from Tuesday, April 6 to Thursday, April 15, and each team starts its own clock whenever suits it inside that window.
Can a Parent Really Be the Supervisor?
Yes. Every team needs an adult supervisor who is at least 21, and one adult can supervise as many teams as they like. The supervisor doesn’t need to be a teacher, and the official FAQ notes that parents often do it. You register yourself on purplecomet.org first, then create your team (or teams) from your account.
On contest day you start the team’s clock, tell them how much time is left, hand out paper and snacks, and fix a laptop that freezes. You may not talk about the problems, point the team to a reference book or type in their answers. If two teams compete in the same room at the same time, each needs its own computer.
If your school does run teams, the school route works differently; it helps to know when your school does register for MATHCOUNTS and what that changes.
Who Can Be on Your Child’s Team?
A team can be one to six students, and they don’t have to come from the same school. Students from different schools, including homeschoolers and math circle members, compete together in a separate mixed-teams category. The old rule that teammates had to live within 150 miles of each other was dropped for 2026. Teammates can even work from different homes, as long as an adult supervises each of them.
Before you register, check three rules:
- If anyone on the team is past grade 8, the whole team takes the high school contest.
- Middle schoolers may also enter the high school contest, and a middle school team can register for both.
- To be on a competitive team, a student must not have finished high school and must be under 20 on contest day. Anyone can join a non-competitive team, which gets participation certificates and no published result.
We’d aim for four students. Six cover more of the paper, but four friends who already know each other can split it without much organizing.
Is It Worth Your Child’s Time?
Purple Comet awards certificates, not prizes: every student gets a certificate of merit or participation, and the website lists the winning teams separately for large schools, small schools and mixed teams. The official rules don’t describe any route from Purple Comet into another contest.
We wouldn’t enter it for the sake of a college application. What your child gets is an hour or more of real contest problems with friends, at no cost, and a first taste of arguing over an answer before typing it in.
It’s a poor fit for a student who only wants a qualifying score, or for a family that can find only one student. A solo entrant can register, but the contest is built for a team, and an individual contest will suit that student better. If you are still comparing options, start with choosing a first contest for a middle schooler.
How Should the Team Prepare?
The official FAQ says many problems are designed to be solved together, and that successful teams both divide the problems and work some of them jointly. Gonit can’t coach that team skill. Gonit is a practice app for one student at a time, for grades 1–12, so it helps with each student’s arithmetic, algebra, geometry and counting.
For the team part, use the real contest. The official site posts the answers to past contests, and AwesomeMath publishes full solutions in its Purple Comet books. Two or three weeks before your date, sit the team down with one past paper under the real time limit:
- Hand out the paper and let the team decide how to split it. Don’t help them decide.
- Stop at 60 or 90 minutes and mark the answers against the official list.
- Spend ten minutes on one question: which problems did two people solve twice, and which did nobody touch?
Run the mock under the real rules. Calculators and computer tools are allowed for calculations, and so are any books and notes the students have with them. Searching the internet is banned, and so are AI tools such as ChatGPT, Gemini and Claude.
What to Do This Month
You can have a team ready long before April:
- Register yourself as a supervisor on purplecomet.org and create the team in your account.
- Ask three to five of your child’s friends to join, from any school or none.
- Pick a 60- or 90-minute slot between April 6 and April 15, 2027 that works for everyone.
Answers go up on April 16 and results on April 19, 2027. By then your child will have competed on a real team, with teammates they picked and a supervisor they know.
Until April, Gonit can cover the individual practice: 10,000+ original Olympiad-style questions by grade and topic, for grades 1–12.
FAQ
Is the Purple Comet Math Meet prestigious?
It is a long-running international contest, held every year since 2003, designed by Dr. Jonathan Kane and Dr. Titu Andreescu and now run by AwesomeMath. It awards certificates instead of prizes, and the official rules don’t describe it as a qualifier for other contests, so its value is the practice and the team experience.
Can my child compete alone?
Yes, a team can be a single student, but the official FAQ says solo students should not expect to complete many problems in the time. A team of three or more is a better plan.
Can students use calculators or AI during the contest?
Calculators and computer tools are allowed for calculations. Internet searches and AI tools are not.
Related guides
- PUMaC: Do You Need a Full Team to Compete?
- ARML: A Parent’s Guide to the American Regions Math League
Louise R. Fox holds a Ph.D. in Mathematics and brings a researcher's perspective to how students actually learn the subject. Based in the United States, she writes about olympiad-level problem solving and the deeper thinking skills that carry students well beyond the classroom.
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