MathCup Academy, a nonprofit math enrichment organization known for its AoPS-aligned, discovery-based curriculum, announced today the results of a joint AMC 8 Master Class run in partnership with LingoAce, an online education platform. The class ran from December 2025 through January 2026 and was designed to prepare LingoAce students for the American Mathematics Competitions (AMC) 8, one of the most widely taken middle-school math competitions in the country.
The course material was designed by MathCup instructors Dr. Mao and Dr. Jin, who structured the class around the rigorous, problem-solving-first approach that has become a hallmark of MathCup's Competition track. Rather than a traditional lecture-and-drill format, the curriculum emphasized guided discovery of key competition techniques across number theory, algebra, counting and probability, and geometry — the core content areas tested on the AMC 8.
“Our goal wasn’t just to review formulas,” said Dr. Jin, co-founder of MathCup Academy. “We wanted students to build the kind of independent reasoning that the AMC 8 actually rewards. Dr. Mao and I designed each session so students would encounter a genuinely hard problem, wrestle with it, and only then see the underlying idea generalized.”
Dr. Mao, who co-designed the curriculum, added that the collaboration with LingoAce gave the program a distinctive advantage: a cohort of students already comfortable with structured online learning, which allowed the class to move quickly into problem-solving depth rather than spending time on platform mechanics.
By the end of the program, more than 50% of participating students achieved AMC 8 scores at the Honor Roll level or above — a result MathCup Academy points to as validation of its pedagogical approach applied to a new student population outside its usual pipeline.
“This partnership was a proof point for us,” Dr. Jin said. “It showed that our curriculum design travels well beyond students who found us directly — it can be layered onto an existing platform’s student base and still produce strong competition outcomes.”
LingoAce and MathCup Academy indicated that the success of the December–January cohort has prompted early discussions about expanding the collaboration to future AMC 8 cycles and potentially other competition tracks.