Most students preparing for both IOQM and AMC assume the exam-day strategy should be roughly the same — work through the paper, answer what you can. This is a mistake, because the two exams score very differently, and the right strategy for one is close to the wrong strategy for the other.
How IOQM Scores
IOQM has no negative marking: every question is worth 1 mark for a correct integer answer, 0 for wrong or blank. There is no penalty for attempting a question you’re unsure of, which means the only real cost of a wrong attempt on IOQM is the time spent — not points lost. The strategic priority is simple: attempt every question you have any genuine shot at, and manage the 3-hour clock across 30 questions carefully.
How AMC 10 Scores — And Why It Changes Everything
| Outcome | AMC 10 Points | IOQM Points |
|---|---|---|
| Correct | 6 | 1 |
| Blank | 1.5 | 0 |
| Wrong | 0 | 0 |
On AMC 10, a blank answer is worth 1.5 points — better than nothing, and critically, better than a wrong guess, which scores zero. This means blind guessing on a question you have zero insight into is mathematically a poor choice (expected value from guessing among 5 options is 6 × 0.2 = 1.2, less than the 1.5 you'd get for leaving it blank) — the exact opposite of the instinct many students bring from school exams where an attempt is always better than nothing.
The Practical Exam-Day Rule
- If you can eliminate two or more of the five options through reasoning, the expected value of guessing among the remainder usually beats leaving it blank — attempt it.
- If you have no real basis for eliminating any option, leaving it blank protects your score better than a pure guess.
- Never let this calculation slow you down on questions you can actually solve — the scoring strategy only matters for the small number of questions where you're genuinely stuck with time running out.
Why This Has to Be Practiced, Not Just Understood
Knowing the rule intellectually and applying it correctly under real time pressure, with 90 seconds left and three unanswered questions on the page, are different skills. This is exactly why timed mock papers — not just untimed problem sets — matter for AMC preparation: they're the only way to build genuine, fast, pressure-tested judgment about when to attempt and when to skip.