Preparation, if you decide you want it.

Everything else on this site is free and always will be. This page is the one place we describe a paid service, so it is worth being straight about what it is and when it is not necessary.

Plenty of students prepare perfectly well on released past papers alone. If that is working for you, keep doing it — the method is written up here and it costs nothing.

Groups of three to eight, formed by level

A diagnostic paper comes before any teaching

First question

Do you actually need a course?

Sit one timed past paper before deciding. The answer usually becomes obvious.

How to run one properly

Probably not

You are mostly losing marks to the clock

If your errors are questions you could have done but ran out of time for, the fix is practice at pace, not new teaching. Released papers and a timer solve this, and a course would largely be selling you something you can do yourself.

Possibly yes

You are meeting whole strands you were never taught

If a paper exposes topics your course simply has not covered — commonly electromagnetism in a first year, or modern physics at any stage — that gap does not close by doing more papers. Teaching closes it.

The third case is the one worth naming honestly: students who know the physics and still get questions wrong. That is usually a decision-speed problem rather than a knowledge problem, and it responds to coached practice — someone watching how you choose which relation to apply, and interrupting when you go the long way round.

What is offered

Two streams, matched to the divisions

Because Division I and Division II are different papers for different stages, the preparation is separated the same way.

Stream	Length	Format and who it is for
D1 intensive	30 hours	1-to-1, or a small group of 3–8. For students in their first physics course sitting Division I. Weighted towards consolidating mechanics and covering the strands a first-year course typically has not reached.
D2 intensive	30 hours	1-to-1, or a small group of 3–8. For students sitting Division II — whether in a second physics course or taking on the harder paper by choice. Weighted towards depth and towards working at contest pace.

Current pricing and dates

Course fees and the current schedule change between cycles, so they are not published on this page — ask and you will be given the current ones. What is fixed is the structure above.

Approach

How the teaching is organised

A diagnostic paper comes first

Before any teaching, a timed released paper under exam conditions. Without that, a course is guessing at what you need, and 30 hours is too much time to spend on the wrong strands.

Grouping by level, not by year

Small groups are formed by what students have covered rather than by age or school year, which is the same principle the division system uses. A group where everyone has the same gap can close it together; a mixed one moves at the speed of whoever is furthest behind.

Teaching against the real constraints

The equation sheet that is actually provided, the value g = 10 m/s², and 67.5 seconds a question. Practising with a textbook formula sheet and unlimited time teaches physics, but it does not prepare you for this paper.

Released material only

Preparation uses papers AAPT has published, with its own solutions. No current-cycle questions, no reconstructions, no advance material — see academic integrity for why that line is not negotiable.

What a course cannot do

A course does not include the entry itself — registration is a separate service we offer, arranged through the official route for your region. And no course can proctor you or influence scoring, awards or the Global Top Scores list, all of which belong to AAPT alone.

It also cannot change which awards you are eligible for. If you sit through a training centre rather than your own school you are in Region 00 and eligible for student awards only, not school or team awards. No amount of preparation alters that, and anyone who implies otherwise is misleading you.

And it cannot promise a result. Awards go to the top two students and top two schools in each region and division; that depends on the field you happen to be in as much as on your own mark. Any preparation service that quotes you an outcome is quoting you something nobody can deliver.

Ask first, decide after

Send us your diagnostic result

Sit a released paper, tell us the score and where the errors clustered, and we will tell you honestly whether a course would help or whether you would be paying for practice you can do alone. We would rather say the second than sell you the first.