UKMT Intermediate Maths Challenge

This video explains how the UKMT Intermediate Mathematical Challenge fits within all of the other UK maths challenges, including typical certificate boundaries and how qualifying for and entering the follow-on Kangaroo and Olympiad rounds works.

The Intermediate Maths Challenge is a maths competition organised by the UKMT, usually sat by students in Years 9-11 (England and Wales), S2-S4 (Scotland) or Years 10-12 (Northern Ireland), though younger students may also enter.

The UKMT Intermediate Maths Challenge is usually considered an ‘enrichment’ activity and schools often offer the competition to their more enthusiastic or high-performing students. A range of students can benefit from taking the challenge, and the earlier questions are always made to be more accessible so that it is not just the top students who will enjoy the Intermediate Maths Challenge!

As well as practising with the past papers linked below, you can prepare for the challenge by taking a Mathsaurus online course. In the free course ‘Get Ready for the Intermediate Maths Challenge‘ you can practise real past SMC questions, each with a video hint and solution. In the upgraded course ‘Go for Gold in Maths Challenges (age 13-16)’, you can follow tutorials on some of the most important topics and try lots of original practice problems not available anywhere else. For even more preparation you could even join one of our live classes.

The exact grade boundaries for the IMC vary from year to year, but 50% of participants receive certificates in the ratio of 1:2:3 Gold : Silver : Bronze . This means that roughly 8% of entrants overall receive Gold, 17% Silver and 25% Bronze. Some students are also invited to take part in the Kangaroo and Olympiad follow-on rounds – the grade boundaries for these depend on which year group the student is in.

The Grey and Pink Kangaroo, and the Cayley, Hamilton and Maclaurin Olympiads are follow on rounds to the Intermediate Maths Challenge. For more information and a table including all past qualification boundaries see the page here. There’s also a YouTube video summarising and discussing all of this information here.

The UKMT Intermediate Maths Challenge is marked automatically. Paper entries are passed through a machine that scans the papers and checks students’ multiple-choice answers so it is very important that students follow the instructions on the answer paper carefully and only enter one answer for each question. Students often keep a note of their answers on rough paper and enter their answers on the answer sheet at the end as it can be hard to erase answers fully if they want to change their answers. Students taking the challenge online do not have this problem of course where the marking is fully automated and answers are chosen on the screen.

The exact boundaries vary from year to year, but you can see a page with all the past UKMT Intermediate Maths Challenge Certificate Boundaries here and this video talks a lot more about the scoring and roughly where the boundaries usually are.

The Intermediate Maths Challenge usually takes place at the end of January or the start of February; the exact date varies from year to year. For this year’s date and how to prepare, see our Intermediate Maths Challenge 2027 page, and you can find the full timetable for every challenge on our maths challenge dates page.

Students who do very well in the Intermediate Maths Challenge can go on to take either the Grey or Pink Kangaroo or the Cayley, Hamilton or Maclaurin Olympiad follow-on rounds. You can find more information about these competitions on the page here.

Yes! The page here explains how to qualify, and also about ‘discretionary entries’ for students who haven’t qualified automatically.

You can only take the Intermediate Maths Challenge via a UKMT test centre. Please see here for advice for private or home-schooled candidates can be found here and you can also take a look at this YouTube video for further discussion.