I am a graduating high school senior, and I will be starting college this September. During my middle and high school years, I have done introductory math competitions like Mathcounts, AMC, AIME, etc., but I have never gotten far (USA(J)MO, MOP, etc.). Now, since I am entering college, I am thinking of seriously preparing for the Putnam. Yes, I know that I have a lot to catch up, but I still want to try.
Thanks to some older students who gave their used books to me, besides my own materials, I have tons of high school competition math preparation books and resources. Just to mention a "few":
- Art of Problem Solving books (volume 1, 2, introduction, intermediate, etc.)
- "_ _ Problems" series (e.g. 104 Number Theory Problems, 105 Algebra Problems, 110 Geometry Problems)
- Lemmas in Olympiad Geometry
- Titu's Problems from the Book (and Straight from the Book)
- Engel's Problem-Solving Strategies
- Past AMC/AIME/USA(J)MO/IMO problems and solutions
- Titu's Topics in Functional Equations
- Titu's Mathematical Olympiad Challenges
- Notes from summer programs like AMSP
- The IMO Compendium
- Evan Chen's EGMO
These are tons of unused resources, so I was just wondering if these books are useful in my preparation for the Putnam. Or, are the Putnam and the high school competitions too unrelated that it would likely be a waste of time to spend my time on these books? I guess it is possible that some of these books are relevant, while others aren't. If someone with experience in these resources and Putnam could answer this question, I would appreciate it. Thank you for any help that you are able to provide.