By Martin Kudrna, a student of Computer Science at Trinity College, University of Cambridge and a GTF BIG Scholar. He won a silver medal at the International Physics Olympiad in 2025 and a bronze at the European Physics Olympiad in 2024. At the International Olympiad on Astronomy and Astrophysics, he won gold in 2025, silver in 2024, and bronze in 2023. In summer 2026, he interned at a Warsaw-based startup that develops digital simulations for testing and validating satellites, including digital twins of satellite hardware. Learn more about Martin in his profile interview.
You can prepare for an Olympiad for years, but your result is determined by a few hours. It’s not just about how much you know — it’s about arriving rested, dealing with the pressure of the exam, and recovering when things do not go as planned.
After my first Olympiad, I realized how easy it was to make things worse for yourself. I was comparing answers, estimating scores, and trying to predict the cutoff, only to find out afterward that most of my predictions were wrong anyway. During three years of taking part in several international Olympiads, I’ve fallen into plenty of traps and learned a few ways of avoiding them.
Olympiad preparation is a long game
It is important to realize that in most cases, your Olympiad preparation will be a long process. It’s helpful to surround yourself with people who support you throughout the process, keep you disciplined and are there for you during moments of doubt.
This support can come from your family, your teachers, fellow participants, or even from an online community focused on Olympiad preparation. There are Discord servers for every International Olympiad, which can provide support through “accountability tracking”, sharing and recommending resources, helping if you get stuck on a problem, or even publishing their own original problems.
I’m now a member of the astronomy and physics servers. Unfortunately, I only discovered them after two years of preparation. Knowing about them sooner would definitely have helped me understand why my approach to a problem was incorrect or find new resources to learn from.
Rest is part of preparation
To maintain momentum, you need to let your brain rest. It is tempting to stay up working late, but exhausting yourself makes it much harder to learn effectively the next day. Try to keep a consistent sleep schedule and, if possible, wake up naturally in the morning.
Give your brain some time to calm down before bed. My routine is to stop studying about an hour beforehand and spend the last half hour doing something relaxing, such as reading. A physical book is best, but an e-ink reader works too. It also helps to turn your phone off during study sessions and before bed, as needing to turn it on will make you less likely to instinctively grab it.
Track progress over months, not days
Preparation for academic competitions involves commitment. Ideally, your progress settles into a slow but steady rhythm, where day-to-day improvement is difficult to notice. You may only learn a single concept or solve one past paper at a time, which can make it feel as though you are not progressing much.
Try to focus on the growing list of things you do know rather than the pile of what you don’t. Looking at the amount of unknown material can give the impression that you are not improving, or even getting worse. It is only when you actively look back at where you were several months ago that you can see how much you have actually learned.
Don't compete against people in your head
This same mindset is important during the Olympiad itself. It’s easy to doubt yourself and feel unprepared, creating a kind of negative placebo effect, which hurts your performance. Don’t underestimate your opponents and get complacent, but also don’t underestimate yourself.
In my case, I would jump to the “logical” conclusion that I was doing worse than everyone else, even when I knew that wasn't true. In my head, if I solved a problem, it was obviously easy and everyone got it; if I couldn't solve it, it still wasn't difficult — I was just being dumb, and everyone else probably solved it. Unless you know you did a horrible job in the exam, this logic is unlikely to be true. Sometimes, you just need to actively suppress it.
It’s not over until it is over
Even if you mess up one exam in a spectacular way, it’s not the time to give up. You can still excel in the remaining rounds if you keep the right mindset.
I experienced this firsthand at the 2024 IOAA. Going into the competition, I felt well-prepared and knew there was a very good chance I could get a gold medal. Unfortunately, the theory round (which makes up 50% of all marks) did not suit me at all. Most of it was geometry-based, which I am not an expert in, and I also got confused by the different notation compared to the Czech Olympiads. Two hours into the five-hour exam, I had only solved problems worth about 20 marks out of 300. After the exam ended, I knew I would realistically get about 100 marks – a performance barely worth a medal at all.
Still, I decided to fight until the very end. I managed to place in the top 15 in the second half of the competition, and ended up taking home a very solid silver medal. Keep fighting. It’s not over until it’s over.
Don't let ambition devalue achievement
Getting a silver medal at an International Olympiad was a huge success, but I was disappointed. After the second half of the competition, I knew I had made up ground and was still hoping for gold. I ended up one theory problem short of the gold cutoff, after making several silly mistakes I knew I could have avoided.
Missing a medal by a small margin is unpleasant, but don’t fixate on where you lost points. Instead, focus on how far you have come. When I first dreamed of going to an International Olympiad, I looked up to the students who made it there. Now I was one of them, yet I felt devastated over “just a silver.” That was unfair to myself. Unless you get full marks, you can always find something you could have done better.
Thinking this way will ruin every closing ceremony, even when you've achieved far beyond your dreams. If you can compete again, aim high, but remember your initial goals. Making it to an Olympiad? Winning a medal? And do not forget the main point of why most people go through all of this: learning new things. Look back at what you have learned compared to where you started, and you may realize that no matter what you just did or did not win, progress is what matters the most and what you will be able to benefit from in the future.
