<p>Yeah, I was just kidding about having a harder Open and Semi, since it appeared that some people might have been complaining that the Open was too easy.</p>
<p>Oh, and Kay? Congratz on…whatever you did with Discovery. That’s really, really awesome. </p>
<p>(Can someone link me to the article?)</p>
<p>^Apologies, “Discover”, as in the magazine, not Discovery. orz She was named Young Scientist of the Year, if I’m not mistaken.</p>
<p>Oh, wow, Kay, congratz. That’s awesome.</p>
<p>Heh. I didn’t get any award - it’s an article about DIYbio stuff. Apparently the USABO coordinator reads Discover. ;-)</p>
<p>And I agree that the first rounds should be reasonable. There’s nothing wrong with having an award for the top 10% in AP Bio knowledge - you made Semis, you got X respectable score, your teachers and your colleges should believe you know something. Not everyone can (or wants to) make camp. I treated the AIME that way; there was no way I was making USAMO, but it was still respectable.</p>
<p>As was mentioned, past a certain level of wow-too-hard, either randomness takes over or you’re selecting for things you don’t intend to. That’s not a good thing. There were a couple of years, in the early days, where Semis was just 4 random essay questions; by chance, a few teachers would inevitably hit a couple of those topics, and there would be a cluster of their students at camp. (Not the same schools, either.)</p>
<p>I’ve also become convinced (grudgingly) that Finals being wow-too-hard is suboptimal, at least if you’re optimizing for the IBO. But that’s another rant.</p>
<p>Is it too late to start studying for USABO?? I took AP Bio last year and I can recal most of the facts learned in AP Bio, expecially those in Molecular Biology and Ecology sections. Again, is it already too late to start study for USABO?</p>
<p>“It’s not too late, it’s never too late” -Three Days Grace</p>
<p>Really it isn’t. If you peruse the USABO 2010 thread, there will be one poster who, I believe, only found about USABO a few weeks before the Open. She made finals. Obviously that’s more the exception than the rule, but point is it’s possible. The vast majority of students taking the Open take it in their AP bio year, so if you self-study this year, you should have an advantage above them.</p>
<p>when are the dates for the open, semis, etc</p>
<p>^I don’t think they’ve decided on that yet [but I could be wrong]</p>
<p>how many percent of usabo is just based on pure memory and how many percent is based on using what you know to draw a conclusion?</p>
<p>Not very many of the questions are pure recall. Those that are are generally in the form of “list the parts of x process in the correct order” so they’re not a cinch either.</p>
<p>Yeah, there’s not much “pure recall”. There’s some “go figure this out”, but it’s mostly “you need to remember this material, and then figure something out from it”.</p>
<p>does remembering enough bio play as a factor? Like, since you’re just drawing conclusions, that means you just need the general principle right?</p>
<p>I’m not sure that general principle is enough, but details are definitely less of a priority than the general principle.</p>
<p>Yeah, it’s important to get the general principles in order to draw the conclusions, but without the details, there’s nothing to draw conclusions from.</p>
<p>does anyone have any tips on remembering all the stuff in Campbell’s?</p>
<p>maybe it’s just me, but reading it over and over again is starting to get boring… :(</p>
<p>^Use NSQ’s amazing study guide!</p>
<p>are there other bio contests besides USABO? I know physics has USAPhO and physics bowl.</p>
<p>is the difference between a finalist and a semifinalist the amount of bio knowledge learned and remembered or is it the ability of one to generate a conclusion from what they have learned?</p>
<p>wow…thread is really quiet</p>