During the MCM, teams are free to use computers, calculators, libraries, and even human sources of background information. Four Strategies for Teaching Motivated Math Students At Thomas Jefferson High School, in Alexandria, Virginia, I was introduced to the members of not one but two complete MCM teams, still in residence after participating as underclassmen in 1998. All seemed to have enjoyed the MCM experience, and expressed interest in participating again. Several expressed regret that the school's modeling course had been discontinued, due to the lack of an interested teacher. It is a four-year school, with a varied curriculum and a broad range of extracurricular activities.
Students ordinarily live at home and commute to school each day.
Pollak, a long-time SIAM member who served on the school's original board of trustees and visited frequently. Incoming students ordinarily take a year of precalculus, followed by a year of calculus. As at Thomas Jefferson, I met several students who had already competed once in the contest and were looking forward to doing so again. The other two schools I visited were chosen mainly for their compatibility with my own rather limited travel plans. The Baltimore Polytechnic Institute was founded in 1883, as one of the city's two honors high schools for men, and retained that status until the mid-1970s, when it embraced coeducation.