<p>Hey there. Is there anyone on AD in this forum?</p>
<p>of course</p>
<p>which state are you from?</p>
<p>Haha, I definitely did aca-deca for one year in AZ. Intense.</p>
<p>Los Angeles, California LAUSD</p>
<p>Ah that sucks.</p>
<p>Almost impossible to get to nationals :-P</p>
<p><a href="http://www.demidec.com%5B/url%5D">www.demidec.com</a> has a somewhat active ad message board btw.</p>
<p>Don't take this the wrong way. I am not blasting AD in any way, shape, or form, since I know relatively little about it.</p>
<p>BUT, at my school, of the sixish main academic teams, Academic Decathlon is considered to be the "loser" academic team that usually gets last priority over what gets chosen. I mean this as in, if you got onto, say, Science Olympiad, the Math Team, and AD, and you only had time for two teams, you'd choose SO and Math team.</p>
<p>Is this the same at other schools, or is ours the weird one?</p>
<p>if my school represents all others, than yours is the weird one. im not on it, but the decathalon team is made up of people who really want to be on it. at least, if i understand what youre saying.</p>
<p>yay for fellow hardcore decathletes :)
i started the AD team at my school. we don't have olympiad or most of the other main academic teams bc we're pretty new. in my school district decahtlon's a pretty big deal bc one of the high schools was a 2 or 3 time national champion.
it seems a ton of decathletes also do academic challenge or quiz bowl here. it's neat bc in decathlon we work pretty hard but quizbowl is more for kicks.</p>
<p>it depends much on how strong your team is and where it has gone in the past. we used to be 34th in the district 4 years ago. we got no support at all. </p>
<p>right now, we're ranked 6th nationally (by statewide competitions) and the support is now much greater. it truly depends on the part of the country. science bowl is also pretty big around here because LAUSD has typically sent national champions in the past.</p>
<p>i'm curious to see how decathletes fare for harvard or any top ivys at that. debaters have higher priority from what i hear.</p>
<p>it's the exact opposite at my school... almost everything else is either a joke (math/science stuff) or based off of AD (the people who do quiz bowl are the people in the AD class)
but then again we've only placed out of the top 3 once in 18 years of doing AD in our state.</p>
<p>You're all lucky to go to schools with academic teams. Our only team is the math team, and it's pretty lousy. We made New Englands for the first time last year, so we might be on the rise. But we placed 8th at the last meet, which was miserable.</p>
<p>Seriously, we suck. Our school is all about sports. Academic stuff gets pushed to the side. I wish we had an AD team. Oh well. I'd really enjoy it if we did (and there's no way I could start one; finding funding for anything is impossible at my school).</p>
<p>We have a quiz bowl team. I thought about trying to do AcaDec this year (contacted the state coordinator and stuff), but I didn't think it was worth the time/money. It seems like a lot of memorization (as opposed to quiz bowl, which seems more "unstudyable"), and I'm not sure if we could have found 3 C-students willing to do it (especially because my HS has HORRIBLY inflated GPAs). Any of you guys do Knowledge Master Open this year? My team placed 1st in the state for the fall, w00t.</p>
<p>My school is horribly inflated too... which is why we usually get owned at c but dominate at every other level... luckily the math teachers don't really inflate their grades too much so we can get some decent c level people that we just have to teach math too</p>
<p>we didn't do very well in knowledge master ~1450 points... too many retards yelling stuff out and the guy operating the computer was too slow.</p>
<p>You have to be so apathetic to get a C average at my school that I'm sure you couldn't be shoehorned into doing an academic competition. Some of my friends have done next to no homework their entire high school career, and have 3.0s.</p>
<p>I just looked up our KMO results: 1624. Only 225 points behind T.J. HS in Virginia! I was the all-time typer (even though I'm probably not the most knowledgeable, I'm good at thinking quickly/listening), and we kind of shoved our less smart people in a far corner and threatened them if they yelled out stupid stuff :-P.</p>
<p>thats interesting. it seems like decathlon is all trivia, but anything in life takes devotion and time. At the same time, what has kept me on the team for the last three years is how much of it really falls to team effort and the people you meet on the way. and even when personalities don't exactly gel, just being ableto get past that and throw it out the window is one skill that's a little hard to find elsewhere--especially when aims are so high. At least that's how i've seen it. pretty much there's no reason to really do it unless you want to win it all. for the schools that lack any support, that's the most important part of it. you can put any student on a decathlon team and that team will win if the coach knows what's going on. how has el camino won most years? the kids on their team aren't much different from students on the east coast. decisions for EA come in a couple days. it'd be nice to see how the decathletes do in this round.</p>
<p>I am doing it, and I sure as hell hope it helps for elite school admissions, because i'm spending around 12 hours per week on it. </p>
<p>BTW i also agree that debate has a higher "prestige" factor.</p>
<p>you think 12 hours/week is a lot?</p>
<p>the good schools spend 8 hours/day on it.</p>
<p>Eight hours a day on one EC?</p>
<p>I find that very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very unlikely. Very unlikely. Very unlikely. Not likely.</p>
<p>Did I mention that I find that unlikely?</p>
<p>Edit: While I suppose eight hours a day on one EC MIGHT be possibly done by a piano/violin virtuoso, nobody would do it for just an academic team.</p>
<p>I've heard insanely intense football teams sometimes push 5-6 hours (practice, lifting, film study). </p>
<p>8 is just... unfathomable.</p>