Format & Eligibility
Find answers to your about contests & rules questions
Format & Eligibility
North Star is an international online math competition, conducted six times during the school year, and run by a small team in Canada and representatives in other countries.
North Star is a problem-solving competition that emphasizes mathematical and logical thinking. The questions draw inspiration from various mathematical and practical topics but only require familiarity with concepts covered in the mathematics curriculum across all Canadian provinces. Students can use the practice tests link on our homepage to check out some recent tests and practice tests to get familiar with the format, content and pattern of the contests
North Star is an entirely online mathematics competition. The contest questions are displayed in an internet browser and the answers must be submitted online.
This allows for great flexibility in organizing and running the contests and allows us to incorporate fun elements like the interactive questions. Students are allowed to use scrap paper for rough work.
Any school-aged child can participate in North Star Contests. We offer 8 levels from the K/1 level up to grade 8. The competition is online so you can participate from anywhere in the world!
No, you don’t have to live in Canada. It is an international online competition: currently (in 2025) we have students participating in over 6 countries!
North Star Contests was founded by Shubro Chakravarty (https://www.linkedin.com/in/shubro-chakravarty-4763b5311/), an IIT–IIM graduate and former statistician. After years of teaching children, he realized there was a need for a fun, game-like math platform that could spark curiosity, build confidence, and offer healthy competition. North Star grew out of his passion for math contests and his desire to give students an engaging alternative to video games. He has assembled a small team of teachers, students, programmers and translators from around the world devoted to promoting learning mathematics.
Because we are so small, we rely heavily on North Star Contest Coordinators (teachers, librarians, parents) who volunteer their time to bringing North Star Contests to their students.
Sometimes North Star Contests puts a question from the lower grade contest in the higher grade contest. Here are some reasons why:
Students must be able to complete 12-15 questions in 60 minutes, so some of the questions need to be relatively easy. Longer than 60 minutes would not be feasible for many logistically. Fewer than 10 questions would make it possible to have a high ranking by guesswork alone.
There is great variation in student ability and so there needs to be great variation in question difficulty. If you look at Contest Results you can see, for example, that the low grade questions are quite difficult for 50% of the students in a higher grade. North Star Contests is a math competition for students of all abilities, not just the most gifted in math.
It means fewer questions for North Star Contests to create, verify, and translate, making it possible to have 6 contests per year for 8 different levels, and even more eventually. The frequency of contests has changed many students’ lives, pushing them to form math clubs in many schools around the world.