What the contest is
The COMAP Mathematical Contest in Modeling (MCM) gives teams of undergraduates an open-ended engineering or scientific problem and four days to do three things at once: develop a mathematical model of the problem, implement and solve it, and communicate the work in a written report. The problems have no single fixed solution and require engineering judgment to make useful recommendations.
The contest was a remarkably good simulator for the kind of consulting work I do now. Real R&D problems also arrive underspecified, also have to be modeled before they can be solved, and also have to be written up in a way someone other than the modeler can use.
My MCM history
From 2004 to 2007, as an undergraduate at MIT, I competed on a team with Daniel Gulotta and Daniel Kane, advised by Professor Martin Bazant. Our team earned top honors in all four of those years:
- 2007 — SIAM Award for Outstanding Paper
- 2006 — INFORMS Award for Outstanding Paper
- 2005 — Outstanding Paper
- 2004 — Ben Fusaro Award
From the contest to a consulting practice
Almost every habit that paid off in the MCM still pays off now. The clients I work with are not handing me equations and asking me to solve them. They are handing me a half-defined engineering problem and asking me to figure out what the question actually is, build something that answers it, and explain the result well enough that someone else can make a decision on it. That is the MCM, just on a longer timescale and with more at stake.
The contest is one of the clearest reasons I do this kind of work today. The habits I formed across those four years, including scoping fast, modeling at the right level of detail, and writing as I go, turned out to be the same habits the job rewards. Doing well in the contest gave me both the confidence and the early evidence that this was a career I could build.
Resources for contestants
Coming soon. I plan to add more detailed advice and resources for current MCM contestants after the 2026–2027 school year begins. Check back then, or drop me a note if you’d like to be reminded when it’s up.