<p>@Jaden, study till you know eveything; not 90, but 100%</p>
<p>Jaden do you like bio a lot? As in during your free time do you enjoy studying Campbells?</p>
<p>@JadenSmith</p>
<p>Have you taken AP Chem yet? If not, try going through an AP chem prep book; I feel like chemistry helped me “BS” the questions I didn’t quite know.</p>
<p>Raven’s Biology of Plants is the next best resource, probably. For some reason, I had difficulty finding this one in local libraries, but managed to get one from Amazon for $23.</p>
<p>Can’t remember if there were any stats questions on semis, but basic probability may also be useful, especially for genetics questions.</p>
<p>Prac is right - it should be easier, as most of us were seniors this year (opposed to last year, when practically everyone was a junior).</p>
<p>I wouldn’t go for 100% on Campbell, personally. It may be the most important book, but I think that 50% Raven’s Plants + 90% Campbell stands a better chance than just 100% Campbell. </p>
<p>I may be wrong, though - semis were forever ago, and I barely barely scraped through that round.</p>
<p>To everyone: feel free to message me, if you have a specific question.</p>
<p>I want this so bad. (lol just thought i’d share)</p>
<p>@Practical I do enjoy biology but I don’t read it in my free time since I don’t really have free time ( I got about only 6 hours of sleep on average last school year so my free time was best spent sleeping)</p>
<p>Woah why r u so busy? wat do u do?</p>
<p>Yes I know I am very busy. The school I go to is ridiculously tough and so I spend lots of my doing HW (Took 5 AP’s last year, and 5 this coming year except these are the harder APs (Chem, Physics, BC, US History, Environmental Science)</p>
<p>O all right. Well, good luck at USABO and I hope I see you at camp. (If I make it)</p>
<p>Practical, how much of Campbell have you read so far?</p>
<p>lol barely any, I most likely will NOT be making finals. I’m on chapter 12 lol. Its SOO boring. Wbu?</p>
<p>…I read the first chapter a couple of weeks ago 
I need some inspiration haha. How did you get to chapter 12 without falling asleep?</p>
<p>lmao I don’t even know. I actually kind of die when I read that book.</p>
<p>Since it seems y’all are looking for some other study resources, the official IBO seems to have only recently uploaded all their theoretical exams to about 10 years back. [Exams</a> — International Biology Olympiad](<a href=“http://www.ibo-info.org/exams]Exams”>http://www.ibo-info.org/exams)</p>
<p>I’ve checked out some of the exams and the questions seems to be a fair indicator of what you’d expect if you plan you get anywhere with BioOly. One secret to share though: USABO is harder than IBO. So don’t get the wrong idea if you think those questions are easy, because USABO will be loads harder.</p>
<p>Also, I don’t want to be discouraging anyone here (what you do with your life should be totally up to you) but you’d better start lovin’ Campbell if you want to get anywhere. Campbell’s totally an important text but it’s still basic basic as far as USABO goes and at least a plurality of the people at National Finals have gone beyond it.</p>
<p>That being said, there were National Finalists who got there on Campbell alone and an Honors Bio/Honors Chem background is more than enough for you (that’s all I had, and I managed to nab a bronze at nationals)</p>
<p>And by the way, NightShadeQueen and the rest of Team USA are in Taiwan this very moment. Bless their genius lil’ noggins ^^</p>
<p>So how much details do I need. For example, if there was a whole paragraph with a bunch of names like who discovered what, numbers (statistics) and dates, and details like “HIV is a virus that came from viruses that infected chimpanzees” or that HIV is is made of RNA, do we need all of those?</p>
<p>Hello! I am seriously debating whether it is already late (or even worse…too late) to start studying for Biology Olympiad. It seems that all of you are working furiously like three months ago so I am really doubting whether starting to study for Bio Olympiad or just give up. I already took AP Bio and currently waiting for my score, I knows almost all of Molecular Biology and Ecology sections from Campbell, but forgot most of other sections. I have numbers of college textbooks but what makes me to worry is that the time. Is it already late for studying Bio Olympiad, and is there any AP scores or class grade specification?</p>
<p>@kwkingdom: Of course the straight answer to that would be the more you memorize the better, but as a rule, it’s best to memorize concepts or “building-block”-type facts (e.g. you probably wanna know that HIV is an RNA virus because knowing that is essential to knowing how the virus replicates) as opposed to plain outright trivia (dates, statistics, etc.)</p>
<p>@Mansu: IMO the AP exams are really a good step below the USABO exams so getting a 5 on the test won’t really give a great indicator one way or the other. I do know that there was one finalist from last year who only heard about the test a few weeks before the Open, so I’m sure there’s plenty of time if you work hard.</p>
<p>Yes, the USABO nationals are harder than IBO. They have to be. This year the worst score we got at the IBO was 7th place - if we could send a B team, I guarantee we’d have more gold medals. You can’t spread the camp enough with an IBO level exam. The challenge is to get spread without forgetting what you’re doing it for (that is, making sure the poor ■■■■■■■ who would’ve gotten 8th at the IBO doesn’t make team). There are different philosophies on this, but making the test easier ain’t one of them.</p>
<p>That said, the IBO archives are a fantastic resource. Some of the recent ones are harder (2008 and 2009 iirc), but all of them are great semis prep. There are only so many concepts that are fair game…you may not believe me now, but Campbell is a teeny-tiny book and the IBO syllabus isn’t much broader. Plus, if the question-writers get lazy, you may see repeats. I’ve definitely stolen ideas, diagrams, and sometimes whole questions from the archives, and I’m not alone.</p>
<p>Also yes, you should be lovin’ some Campbell if you expect to get anywhere. There are easier ways to get into college; if you don’t get at least some pleasure out of this, you should do something else instead. Olympiads aren’t something you take on out of raw ambition. They are a way to recognize and develop the people who are weird enough to think this is fun. If you don’t enjoy it, I guarantee you will be outworked by the people who do. Not just for USABO either. I used to hang out with MOSP kids, and I was used as scratch paper more than once (oh noes! no more paper, must do math, can I use your arm plz?). They would have been doing that with or without the incentive of IMO. As for me, I was gunning for the perfect score letter on AP Bio before there even was a USABO (didn’t get it, but I know which question I missed). It kept me challenged at a time when I would have been cross-eyed drooling bored, and yeah, it was kind of fun.</p>
<p>There were more questions in here.</p>
<p>@kwkingdom: Don’t bother with names and dates. There’s no History section. I can’t guarantee that a trivia question like that has never made it onto an Open, but it really shouldn’t.</p>
<p>The specific example of viruses is a good one to illustrate the kind of “is it canon or isn’t it” questions that come up. In terms of taxonomy, the IBO guide gives us only “Virales”…yeah. Therefore the list of named sub-classifications in Campbell (Table 19-1) isn’t fair game. I would never write a question that hinged on knowing the difference between flavivirus and filovirus, and most other people wouldn’t either. I did memorize this table back in the day, but I don’t think it ever came up.</p>
<p>However, the difference between the viral life cycles is fair game, provided you’re told what they are. If you’re told that “X is a relative of HIV and Y is a negative-strand RNA virus”, you should be prepared to answer questions about the life cycles of X and Y. (I wouldn’t have approved that question, but it might sneak through on Semis. For HIV specifically, it is so famous that somebody might forget to tell you what it is, even though they should. And somebody who hasn’t read Campbell in awhile might not remember that it doesn’t use the positive/negative strand terminology…but think about it, you can figure it out. The concepts are fine.)</p>
<p>@JadenSmith: NightShadeQueen gave you good advice. Also, I’d stay away from Voet; if you want something else to read, do Alberts (once). Some things that you can infer from Campbell are spelled out in Alberts; this can save you points, but as I’ve said, don’t sit there and memorize the whole thing.</p>
<p>Other standard advice for Semis: memorize the heck out of the ethology chapter in Campbell, it’s 5% of the test. For experimental questions, the GRE Biology exams are the closest thing I’ve found; check out some practice exams, though the available review books are kind of crap. MCAT biology is decent too, though it’s too easy and limited to animal stuff (which makes sense). If you don’t know an answer, BS well - biology is 80% applied thermodynamics and 20% dead-language root word recognition. And yes, there were a lot of seniors this year, so somebody’s got to fill those slots.</p>
<p>Edit: Also, I’ve heard that the taxonomy section is getting a hardcore revision - in particular, animals is being brought into line with Campbell. For you early birds, you may wish to study something else until this comes out officially (I don’t have a copy of the draft syllabus, so I can’t say more than this).</p>
<p>@blueroses67 How do you know whether you need a lot of details or just the concepts?</p>
<p>^ Thank you for that great advice!</p>
<p>I am a little confused about what you mean by 80% Applied Thermodynamics - are you talking about the team selection test or just the semifinal exam. I don’t really recall there being too much on the semifinal exam where thermo dynamics could be applied - so Im inferring your talking about the team selection test (which is one step above what Im aiming for). So how much of what you said (Voet, GRE for practical exam, Ethology) applies to the Semifinal exam - thats my only goal.</p>
<p>@JadenSmith: I don’t mean in the sense of questions specifically about deltaG and whatnot…I mean in the sense that whatever the correct answer is, it needs to make sense under the laws of physics. Better yet, it needs to have been evolvable under the laws of physics, and it needs to make sense for the organism given its relatives / habitat / etc. That’s actually a pretty strong constraint. If you stop and ask yourself “what’s a logical way for this system to be working”, you can get a surprising number of points on things you don’t know.</p>
<p>Much of the rest is sheer vocabulary. Things in biology tend to be named via the algorithm “find descriptive terms in Latin and Greek, decide which ones sound coolest, then combine them into a word”. If you have no clue what a word of this type means, you can generally make a good guess by analogy to other words containing the same parts. An ounce of BSing skills saves a pound of knowledge…</p>
<p>And yes, that last post was specifically about semis. There’s a post by me on the first page that was more directed at camp. If you’re worried about semis, I would ignore the online college courses mentioned, 7.02 possibly excepted, unless you’re truly well past the point of diminishing returns with Campbell. And I’d nudge Alberts up a bit higher. Semis are written by molecular biology professors, so there may be an inflated sense of “things reasonable to infer from Campbell” on the molecular / cell side.</p>
<p>@kwkingdom: If it’s in Campbell, and particularly if it’s in a chart or figure, you should know it. (Digestive enzymes? Vitamins? Amino acid structures? You bet.) The major exception is taxonomy terms that are not in the IBO syllabus. Also, don’t memorize the codon table; it takes forever, and if you need it they’ll give you one.</p>