2012 USABO Thread

<p>Again, I don’t think *anyone knows everything in Raven and Campbell. If you know EVERYTHING in both those books then you’re already some sort of genius and finals will probably be a cakewalk for you. </p>

<p>And blueroses/other people have already covered this before, I think…everything is fair game. Remember her example about fly ommatidia? Ommatidia aren’t exactly considered “mainstream knowledge”…neither is horse evolution or human evolution. EVERYthing is fair game.</p>

<p>Though like 1asdfghjkl said, use some common sense when you’re divvying up your study time. Obviously, don’t spend hours memorizing a horse evolution chart if you still don’t know how a kidney works, or something. Generally evolution questions will focus on some kind of Hardy-Weinberg/“progression of populations”-type problem - I’ve never seen a USABO test that asked about horse/human evolution. So whether or not you “need to know” specific information shouldn’t be our call - you should decide what you need to know. All we can say is that you CAN be tested on it.</p>

<p>And about the organelles, yes, you definitely should know what organelles look like. As for “where they’re located”…maybe I’m not interpreting the question correctly, but if you memorized the location of a mitochondrion in a Campbell diagram, for example, that tells you nothing about where a mitochondrion might be in any real cell in the universe.</p>

<p>@biofreak: I think 500 hours (1 hour/day x 1.5 years) is a realistic estimate for someone who hasn’t done AP Bio yet. Remember, though, it’s not a pilot’s license - time in the seat doesn’t matter, data in the brain does, so study in a way that’s efficient for you. If you do best on an hour per day, more power to you. I wasn’t that organized. ;-)</p>

<p>And as others have said, no reason you can’t have a go at it this year. Freshmen are rare at camp, but we usually do get sophomores, and a few of them have made team.</p>

<p>@kwkingdom: I’d put the horses, hominids, etc in the category of taxonomy-things that aren’t in the syllabus…therefore not fair game.</p>

<p>You should have some idea of the structures of things (cells/tissues, not just plant sections). I remember seeing electron microscope slides on an older semi, and histology is fair game at camp, though harder to get good pics for semis. What they ask is usually easy and straight from Campbell, so don’t worry, but it’s something to keep in mind.</p>

<p>@oldguy: Yeah. Nobody knows everything. If you legitimately have both Campbell and Raven memorized, you’ll make team, and probably win IBO, assuming you can avoid setting the majority of your practical rooms on fire.</p>

<p>Edit: Also, if you’re out of opens and want more practice, old AP Bio MC sections would be a reasonable choice. No, I don’t know why they insist on putting the opens in the teacher section…if I had them I’d post them.</p>

<p>On the horses/hominids: blueroses is making more sense than I am, now that I think about it. Defer to her.</p>

<p>do i have to memorize all the charts and graphs</p>

<p>^Read through the thread, you’ll find your answer.</p>

<p>I do most of my studying during school (study hall period) and the only bio textbooks I have available are a 5th edition of Campbells and Biology by Silvia Mader. Should I bother using either of these? I have the 9th edition at home and it would be a pain to bring it to school, but that is also an option for me. Would it be worth it?</p>

<p>I’m guessing you don’t have a locker, so you could maybe talk a teacher into storing it for you… Campbell’s spine isn’t really built for a book of its size and you will definitely ruin it if you carry it to school every day.</p>

<p>Mader is good for introduction/last-minute review of the subject, so maybe not the best for doing core studying. Campbell’s 5th might also be pushing it.</p>

<p>Re: what to learn. The official answer is “everything that the IBO guide covers”, I think. </p>

<p>And yea, you do have to memorise a lot of graphs and charts.</p>

<p>@kestrel24: Do you have access to the online version of Campbell? If you did, you could leave your paper copy at school, but still have something to use at home. Alternately, if you don’t have a locker and don’t want to leave your 9th sitting around in a classroom, you could buy a cheap used copy and “donate” it to your study hall (older editions are cheaper, but 5th is indeed pushing it). It’s not a small book, so I don’t blame you for not wanting to haul it back and forth all the time.</p>

<p>Thanks for the replies – I do have a locker but it’s so far away from my classes that it’s impractical to use it. I just bought a used 8th edition to keep at school.</p>

<p>Another question –where is the online version you speak of? I got my 9th off Amazon but I didn’t see any mention of it. It is possible to purchase online access?</p>

<p>Thanks again!</p>

<p>^ If your book was bought new, there should have been a card that came with it, with an access code that gives you a free year’s access to the online. You can buy it yourself, but it was pricey…I used a friend’s ID to read the 8th, since I only have a physical copy of the 6th.</p>

<p>im not too sure if anyone mentioned this since i looked through the old posts and didnt find anything, but i found the student study guide for the eighth edition to the campbell textbook and it seems useful to me since it includes (according to amazon) “a concept map of each chapter, chapter summaries, word roots, chapter tests, and a variety of interactive questions including multiple-choice, short-answer essay, labeling art, and graph-interpretation questions”. Therefore will the getting the study guide will be a huge advantage or a waste of money and be better off just doing it the old fashioned way with practice tests, memorization and using the cornell method and flashcards?</p>

<p>^You know, I don’t know of a single person who’s ever used the study guide - I’d be wary of a resource that doesn’t cover things fully enough for a test of USABO’s caliber.</p>

<p>but im asking do you have to memorize all the charts and the graphs for the open exam not the semifinal exam</p>

<p>Is there anything like this for physics?</p>

<p>^USAPhO; look it up.</p>

<p>yeah, there’s a physics olympiad as well
but apparently, it’s supposed to be really hard to get into. D:</p>

<p>Well, aren’t they all supposed to be really, really hard to get into?</p>

<p>(Should I push for a harder Open and Semi?)</p>

<p>Re: study guides - we gave them out at camp one year, and the reaction was “eh”. Possibly useful if you’re just starting out, but it’s designed for people who just want to get college credit for AP Bio and move on with their lives.</p>

<p>Re: other olympiads - yeah, there are a bunch. Math is most famous, but there’s physics, chemistry, CS, and now Linguistics…and there are more the US hasn’t bothered to team up for (astronomy, geography, apparently there’s earth science now?).</p>

<p>I don’t think any of them are easy - math is probably the scariest, on account of the sheer number of geeky Mathcounts kids out there dreaming of the IMO, but the rest aren’t easy either.</p>

<p>And NSQ, save your evil for Finals. ;-)</p>

<p>Unless you’d like to help write the new Open…you take the “things on prime-numbered pages of Alberts” section, and I’ll take the “things in the papers Kay has to read for Journal Club” section. (Yes, I’m kidding.)</p>

<p>Oh lord, let’s not get a repeat of 2010 Open…the problem with ramping up difficulty on a test like USABO is that once you pass a certain “hardness” threshold, the test stops selecting for those of us who are actually good at bio, since everyone’s just guessing. I remember several people from that year who made semis and literally knew no bio. </p>

<p>And Kay: I heard about your Discovery article. Good job beasting it up.</p>