2012 USABO Thread

<p>@kwkingdom: Yes, you can take all the semis you like. However, it’s considered bad form to commit to a camp and then back out - this can get you blacklisted. All the camps are in the same time window, more or less, so there is drama as those who are competitive for multiple camps wait for all the notifications to trickle out.</p>

<p>For the second bit, I don’t think you have to take an AP course - rather, if you’ve taken an AP course, or up to one year of post-AP (or post-college equivalent of AP) courses, you are still considered a high school student and are eligible to compete.</p>

<p>Re school support:</p>

<p>I went to TJ (that math-science school outside of DC). There was good structural support for academic competitions, and a lot of really geeky people to do them with…as I said, I had no freaking clue any of this existed, but some upperclassmen decided I had potential and pulled me in.</p>

<p>The school knew that I was a strong biologist, and I got respect for it. I was basically allowed to TA for AP bio when I took it (this was sophomore year, before USABO existed). And the oceanography teacher started an Ocean Bowl team because (her words) “I hear you won Science Bowl, and the prize for winning Ocean Bowl is a free trip to Hawaii. Want to be captain?” The school was also used to people missing epic amounts of school for contests; they were really lenient with makeups and covered for me with the truancy office.</p>

<p>I’m also still the only one from my school who has done IBO, though there have been a bunch of finalists. So the prep team hears about me…“if Kay can do it, so can you”.</p>

<p>(and I’m off to DMV. fun.)</p>

<p>Re college admissions:</p>

<p>I got rejected from RSI, NIH, and everything else I applied to as a junior. Which scared the crap out of me, honestly…I’d told my parents, guidance counselors and other well-meaning onlookers to shove off with the well-roundedness, and now I wasn’t sure I could get into the colleges that advertise on the subway.</p>

<p>Fast-forward a year, and I was admitted everywhere I applied. The IBO medal wasn’t the whole difference, but it was a lot of it.</p>

<p>I did have a whole lot of leadership. By senior year, I was captain of five academic teams, including three I helped start…there were times when I resorted to having meetings in the breaks between classes. And I’m the Mr. Rogers of scantron tests - never met one that I didn’t like. </p>

<p>The rest of my profile was okay. I refused to do NHS on principle (a moral objection to spending my Precious Free Time on inane paperwork and mandatory inane-paperwork-related meetings), but I easily could have. And I’d done a summer of research; my project wasn’t good enough for Intel et al (really it wasn’t), but it got me 4th author on a paper.</p>

<p>But while it worked out for me in the end - and I had an awesome, if crazy-busy, time in high school - I’ll point out again that relying on contests alone is a high-risk strategy. There’s an excellent essay by Cal Newport* that does a good job of explaining why…we’re impressed most when we can’t even imagine how someone managed to do something. Contests aren’t great at this. (How do you make IBO? Well…you read Campbell…and then you read Campbell again…)</p>

<ul>
<li>[Study</a> Hacks Blog Archive How to Get Into Stanford with B’s on Your Transcript: Failed Simulations & the Surprising Psychology of Impressiveness](<a href=“http://calnewport.com/blog/2010/03/26/how-to-get-into-stanford-with-bs-on-your-transcript-failed-simulations-the-surprising-psychology-of-impressiveness/]Study”>How to Get Into Stanford with B's on Your Transcript: Failed Simulations & the Surprising Psychology of Impressiveness - Cal Newport)</li>
</ul>

<p>Sorry I’m new here, but I’m just wondering what is USABO?</p>

<p>@blueroses67 Very interesting article but I sort of think it doesn’t give gaining recognition in competitions enough credit. Wouldn’t your acceptance into a top tier college be based on what you’ve achieved compared to others? I mean even though college admission officers know how you make IBO, only a certain amount of people actually make it and it’s a low percentage. Besides, looking around on the web, I noticed that many finalists and team members for olympiads, or intel/siemen semifinalists get into at least one top tier college.</p>

<p>@kwkingdom123</p>

<p>To make a long story much, much shorter:</p>

<p>Basically, someone isn’t nominated as a USABO Finalist until they agree to certain conditions. If your semi score is in the top 20+some alternates (dunno the number of these), CEE will email you a form that reads*:</p>

<p>

</p>

<ul>
<li>At least, I got sent this form both years I made USABO.</li>
</ul>

<p>If that person refuses to sign the form and agree to the conditions, then they won’t become a Finalist.</p>

<p>Also re: college admissions:</p>

<p>I also got rejected left and right - rejected from Stanford, Harvard, Princeton, other schools I don’t quite remember. </p>

<p>The only reason I was in NHS is because it’s ridiculously easy at my school ([TAMS](<a href=“https://tams.unt.edu/"]TAMS[/url]**”>https://tams.unt.edu/)**</a>) - a certain amount of volunteer hours (like 175? 150?) in two years and maintaining a 3 point something GPA. My school also basically bribes people to do Siemens/Intel, as we can get a free A and $2,200 if we receive their “research scholarship” (and like 2/3 of those who apply will get it), do eight weeks of research (35+ hours a week) and also write a paper on our research. We didn’t have to apply to Intel/Siemens, but since I already had to write a paper for my school, I just edited it and turned it into Intel, and one of my labmates and I combined our essays and turned it in for Siemens. (I also slapped a cover letter on my TAMS research paper, added a few pictures of me and my research mentor at the end, and sent it to unis as a “research supplement”.)</p>

<p>**If you’re looking at the picture of our Siemens Finalists/Semifinalists, I must point out that they pulled us into this photo at 11pm.</p>

<p>@NightShadeQueen Did you make semis for intel/siemen?</p>

<p>how many times do you have to read campbell in order to remember most of it?</p>

<p>30 times</p>

<p>10char</p>

<p>…this topic is totally irrelevant to USABO, but got nothing on Intel and Regional Finalist on Siemens.</p>

<p>…and I’ve read Campbell approx 5 times in full, but covered certain chapters (cough 47 cough) up to like 50-60 times.</p>

<p>^^Which chapters did you read up to like 50-60 times?</p>

<p>because kay and shulin so thoroughly covered studying strategies, i’ll just remind you of something that is often overlooked:</p>

<p>this makes me sound old, but make sure you maintain at least some decent semblance of good posture while you’re studying. i made the 2010 camp by studying like a maniac and putting myself in extremely uncomfortable postures to keep me awake, but i’m pretty sure that was what ultimately resulted in my lumbar disc herniation. i couldn’t attend 2011 camp because of this.</p>

<p>camp is awesome, medals are awesomer, but don’t jeopardize your health for what is merely a brief moment of awesomeness.</p>

<p>btw, shulin, great job at ibo. mad respect for you.</p>

<p>I heard that many finalists/medalists didn’t make it again last year? Why is that?</p>

<p>What samgunno said. (Ouch, btw…I’m sorry you had to go out like that.)</p>

<p>People don’t think of science contests as physical events, but you can still mess yourself up badly. I was able to stay awake at night to study because I was sleeping through my classes - and in order to do that, I more or less broke my circadian rhythm. This worked great…until it didn’t, and I spent a miserable ~2 months in my sophomore year of college unable to stay awake for more than a couple of hours at a stretch. Be warned. They call it “sleep debt” for a reason…eventually your body will foreclose on you.</p>

<p>(I also messed up my neck by running down a flight of stairs with a 60-lb backpack on. I couldn’t lift my head for a week, couldn’t wear a backpack at all for another year, and was at less than full strength on that side for longer. Don’t do that either. And I managed to hobble myself for a week by sitting funny at a USACO contest, much to the amusement of everyone but me.)</p>

<p>Now I’m less stupid about these things; in fact, I just spent the day building a standing desk, so I can rock the ergonomics as a grad student. If you start paying attention to your health before things break on you, your life will be better. Trust the old lady on this.</p>

<p>And @kwkingdom: there’s always some turnover. People decide they want to do another olympiad, or they go to RSI, or they say screw it I’m a senior and I want to go to prom, or they get busy or cocky or just plain unlucky and don’t make the cutoff on semis, or…they get injured and can’t attend. Life happens.</p>

<p>We had probably more returners than average this year, but on the plus side, there were a whole lot of seniors. Camp should be a bit easier to get into next year…relatively speaking of course.</p>

<p>Also, for those competing this year, I’m going to give you a heads-up. They’ve redone taxonomy completely - I’ve seen the draft, though it won’t be finalized until November. On the plus side, it’s now modernized (more up-to-date than Campbell 8th, though there’s only one substantive difference that I noticed), so you don’t have to politely ignore that part of your books.</p>

<p>However, it’s also really long. (Old: 305 words. New: 535 words. And there aren’t as many example genera in the new one yet.) We’ll try to get them to shorten it a little, but we have basically no control over the IBO, so who knows. And again, it’s coming out in November, just in time for next year’s exams. (I will confirm that it’s actually going to be used on the open, but it should be.) You may want to save some time for this.</p>

<p>Hey blueroses67 I have a question about taxonomy - do you mean that taxonomy as in knowing which kingdom,phylum,class,genus,species many important organisms are in (for example, monkey, oak tree , e.coli) or do you mean taxonomy as in chapters 29-34 where they discuss prokaryote,fungi,bacteria,plant,invertebrates, and vertebrate diversity.</p>

<p>I’m wondering this because USABO (at least not at the open + semifinal level) in the previous years didn’t really focus on the life cycles and various parts of fungi (basidocarp,sori,fruiting body etc.) or characteristics of invertebrates (water valcular system) but instead favored plant + mamamalian physiology. Do you mean to say this has changed? That we now need to pay attention to taxonomy (as in remembering all these characteristics) or do we now need to memorize the names and like lineages? Thanks for the help!</p>

<p>I mean the taxonomy section of the IBO syllabus, which hasn’t had a serious update in 5+ years and is now way behind the recent Campbell editions.</p>

<p>You’re right that plants and animals are more important. Plant phys (15%) and animal phys (25%) take up nearly half the test, while taxonomy (5%) has to cover plants, animals, everything else(!) in Campbell 29-34, AND taxonomic principles (parsimony, etc). If there’s a question on fungus life cycles, it’s shoehorned into that 5%.</p>

<p>Also, you won’t have to know things down to the species level. They give you lists of genera in the syllabus, but those are just examples that you’d be expected to recognize. (For instance, if you got a picture of a woodpecker, you wouldn’t have to identify it as such - but you could be asked to name the order it’s in.)</p>

<p>I’m not sure how hard the detailed taxonomy (plant families, bird orders, etc) is pushed on the semis - anyone remember seeing it recently? But the larger categories should absolutely be on there, if only for 5%.</p>

<p>@ sam: ouch. That really, really sucks. I hope you’re feeling better now.</p>

<p>@ blue: that really sucks too. <em>eyes my 40ish lb backpack guiltily</em></p>

<p>Well, it’s somewhat irrelevant, considering the voting in November, but I do remember a question about bird orders or insects in one semifinal or another. Or maybe that was nationals. I don’t know. Sorry. My memory of anything not knowledge-related…sucks.</p>

<p>I’ve seen the draft of the taxonomy guide as well. There’s parts that I love, and parts that still are kind of strange. But I like that it’s so much more modern than before.</p>

<p>Hey guys!
I’m heading into tenth grade and am trying to make finals in junior year. Is Campbell’s 7th Ed. enough? I am borrowing 7th edition from my school but I have my dad’s 3rd edition which seems too old. Do the campbell books change their material very much from 7th to 9th? Do you think 7th ed campbell biology would suffice for all the content needed to make finals? Also do you think it is possible for me to make finals if I seriously put in only 1 hour every day studying from campbell/ravens/other until USABO junior year?</p>

<p>^Yeah, that should be more than plenty.</p>

<p>@biofreak</p>

<p>Campbell’s 7th should be perfectly fine. I still use my 8th and blueroses still has her 6th.</p>

<p>Only thing I’d say about your study schedule is that you could try for USABO in your sophomore year, even if you don’t feel fully prepared by then. It’d help you gauge how much you know, for example, and it’d also give you a taste of the questions.</p>