Euclid Contest

Benefits & funding

• Participants pay to write: CAD 18.00 per participant, plus a CAD 5.00 processing fee per school order and shipping (CAD 5.00 within Canada, or 15% of the order total with a CAD 10.00 minimum elsewhere). All fees are in Canadian dollars, and the CEMC offers no refunds, credits or cancellations.
• The top 25% of participants receive a Certificate of Distinction.
• The top-scoring student at each participating school receives a medal.
• The top five official participants in Canada each receive CAD 500 at the discretion of the CEMC; the next ten official participants in Canada each receive CAD 200.
• Leading scores are listed on zone, provincial and national honour rolls.
• The CEMC publishes past Euclid papers with full solutions and dedicated Euclid preparation material at no cost.
• Waterloo states that contest participation is not required for admission to the Faculty of Mathematics, but is an asset to an application and can help in Faculty scholarship decisions.

Eligibility

• Aimed at students in their final year of secondary school and at CÉGEP students; students in lower grades may also write.
• No nationality requirement — the paper is written at schools inside and outside Canada.
• Students cannot register as individuals. Every participant writes through a school that has ordered the contest, and a student whose own school is not participating may look for another local school willing to host them.
• Participants may write only at the school that ordered the contest, in a classroom, supervised in person, on the official contest date for that country.
• Official participant status, which is what qualifies a student for honour rolls and a school team score, requires a properly completed Student Information Form and a birth date on or after 1 January 2007; at a school inside Canada the participant must also live in Canada. Students outside those conditions may still write the paper without being ranked as official participants.
• Applicants to the Waterloo Faculty of Mathematics attending secondary school in Ontario must write the Euclid at their regular school for the Admissions and Scholarship Committees to consider the score.

Application process

1. 1
   Ask the school’s mathematics department whether it will run the Euclid Contest in the 2026/27 contest year.
2. 2
   If the school has no CEMC school account, the principal or head of mathematics submits a new school application; review can take up to three weeks.
3. 3
   The school signs in to the CEMC Contest Supervisor Portal with its nine-digit CEMC School Number and orders the contest, paying a fee for each participating student. Ordering for the 2026/27 contest year opens in September 2026.
4. 4
   The school completes its order by the deadline of 11 March 2027.
5. 5
   Students prepare using the CEMC archive of past contests and the Euclid preparation material.
6. 6
   Participants write the paper under supervision on 6 April 2027 in North and South America, or 7 April 2027 elsewhere, and complete the Student Information Form.
7. 7
   The school returns the completed materials; results and certificates reach students through the contest supervisor’s portal account.

Program timeline

1. September 2026

   Contest ordering opens for the 2026/27 contest year

2. Deadline for schools to order the Euclid Contest

   11 March 2027

3. Contest written in North and South America

   6 April 2027

4. Contest written outside North and South America

   7 April 2027

5. After marking

   Results and certificates released to school contest supervisors