What is this course for?

What is this course for? (What is our goal?)

Your goal is to improve your score on the AMC 8 this coming January.
This course’s goal is to put into your head all the math knowledge you’ll need in order to achieve that goal.

How does this course help me?

This course does three things:

It puts knowledge directly into your head, quickly and permanently.
It knows exactly what knowledge you need to have there.
It can tell whether you really know it or not.

How does it do that?

Recently there was a big breakthrough in the science of memorization. The learning engine that powers this course is built on that research, and it works better than anything you’ve seen before. Basically, the Achievable team figured out how to turn that research into a tool that uses the research without making you know anything about it. It works unbelievably well. Like in, you will literally have trouble believing that certain things have been put into your memory.
Your guide here (me!) is Wes Carroll. I’ve been coaching AIME qualifiers for over 20 years. I know exactly what you need to know, and what you really don’t.
The multiple-choice quizzes in this course contain very smart “trap” answers. If you only mostly know the material, we’ll catch you. (Then you can really learn it.)

This course puts the right knowledge, directly into your memory.

Why do I need this?

Couple reasons. First, the AMC 8 is hard. I mean, you’ve probably heard it before, and maybe you pretty much coast through every math class and still get an A, and you think you know that “difficult” is a word for other people. That’s fine.

But consider who takes the AMC 8 in the first place. Are these the people who work for B+'s in a regular math class? Mostly no. Instead, they are the people who are in an honors class with older kids and still coast through. Most of them think that they will get at least 20 of the 25 questions right, and most of them will fall far short of that expectation. So you need more help than you may realize.

Second, this course will help you take advantage of a serious flaw in the mindset of most competitors. This flaw will prevent them from working as effectively as you will. Therefore, you’ll get a better score than people who believe that they “deserve” to out-perform you.

That mindset, in a nutshell, is that the way to learn math is by doing problems. That’s misleading. Doing problems is a terrible way to learn the math building blocks you need for this competition. Practice problems are for after you know all the building blocks.

Learning this stuff in the right order makes you improve tons faster. And that means you’ll have enough time to rise to the top of the pack.

This course gives you the first stuff first, so that you don’t get distracted with unproductive activities like doing problems before you know the building blocks cold.

What does this course not do?

It doesn’t give you practice AMC problems.
It doesn’t give you problem walkthroughs.
It doesn’t give you any “nice to have” knowledge. Only the necessary stuff.
It doesn’t teach you how to think; it only gives you the right ideas to think with.

This course is about putting the necessary knowledge into your mind. It does it well, it does it fast, and it does it permanently.

Once you’re done with this course, you’ll feel like everything you need to know just pops into your head when you need it.

From the outside, your speed and comfort will look like an unbelievable magic trick.

Why does this course work like this?

Because learning the material, and learning how to effectively use the material, are two different skills. confusing the two leads to roadblocks. Separating them out leads to champions.