College Discussion's Unofficial USABO 2009 Thread

Pre-College Issues High School Life
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<p>I got a 124.25 =(
Almost made it…</p>

<p>There is a histogram, with about 6 people getting scores of 137-152, about 24 people getting scores from 121-136.</p>

<p>I saw a list of the winners, but don’t remember too much
2 from Santa Monica, 4 from Stuy, and a few previous Gold Medalists at IBO.</p>

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<p>BTW, average score was a 95.43, out of 526 participants. 166 schools, 39 states + HK + China were represented.</p>

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<p>Could you post a list of the winners?</p>

<p>Hmmm… did all of the gold medalists from last year return? </p>

<p>Wow, so the highest was a 152? out of 160? That’s impressive!</p>

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<p>If anybody here has access to the histogram, can you upload it online somewhere for us CCers on spring break? :D</p>

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<p>phosphorylescenc:</p>

<p>This is a little confusing, but I think I figured it out. On the teacher’s section of the USABO website, it says 127 points possible on the exam. But the max “score” on the histogram is 152. What I’m thinking is that they take the semifinal exam and add half your score on the open exam; this would make the highest possible score in fact 152, agreeing with the histogram. Then, 5-6 people scored in the top score range, 137-152, which seems slightly less “miraculous” than a score of 152/160. Like asong said, there are about 30 people within the first two score ranges on the histogram. My semifinal score was 116.25. Calculating my “overall” score by adding half of my open exam score, I got 131.75, which places me in the top 30, but unfortunately not top 20.</p>

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<p>Wow, that clarifies some things.</p>

<p>Although I’ve never heard of them doing that before. I wonder if they’re doing that for finals. It would explain why they did not release our scores for semis and it explains the somewhat cryptic email I got from them.</p>

<p>So according to your calculations, that would mean that the max possible semifinal score could be 137? (152 -15 =137)</p>

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<p>No, the website says max possible semifinal exam score is 127. The max possible “overall score” is therefore 127 + half of 50 = 127 + 25 = 152, which agrees with the histogram. My score on the semifinal exam was 116.25, and on the open exam was 31/50, so my overall score is 116.25 + 15.5 = 131.75.</p>

<p>According to the histogram (and a ruler), about 5 people made it in the top scoring range, 137-152. About 25 people made it in the second scoring range, 121-136. So those top 5 people in 137-152 range, plus the top 15 people out of the 25 in the second scoring range, are finalists. Since I’m not on the finalist list, I know that I’m somewhere in the upper half between 21st and 30th place, which reallly sucks. Do you think any of the 20 finalists will drop out? I hope.</p>

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<p>rb1909: you are wrong. I got my S’s semi-score and the histogram in front of me.
His semi-score is 123.75. And his score for Open-exam was 33 so the total of his score is:</p>

<p>123.75 + 33 = 156.75 (that is off chart according to your theory :slight_smile: )</p>

<p>FYI: he did not make into the top 20.</p>

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<p>Rb1909: Sorry. I read your post wrong. </p>

<p>So according to your theory, my S’s score would be 123.75 + 16.5 = 140.25, that would put him into the top 5 or 6 according to your theory. Still, he did not make into the top 20. So still your theory is wrong.</p>

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<p>Hmm, then what do you think about the scores? The histogram has 152 as the upper limit of scores, but the teacher’s website says 127 is the max semifinal score… and so the highest-scoring bar of the histogram got bonus points or something? I don’t know what to make of it; does anyone else?</p>

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<p>

A few? How about ALL of the ones from last year?</p>

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<p>Yup, all four are coming back. Should be fun times.</p>

<p>Someone upload the histogram so we can get this straightened out. It would be pretty weird if they did a sum of the two exam scores, but I don’t even know my own results so I can’t say much.</p>

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<p>The exam is out of a total of 167 points. I will provide the histogram soon; just gotta upload it to my friend’s server.</p>

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<p>Having some technical issues. Link will be here:
<a href=“http://grinberg.dynalias.org/~jack/P10110816.JPG[/url]”>http://grinberg.dynalias.org/~jack/P10110816.JPG&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

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<p>Whoops, extra 1 in there.
<a href=“http://grinberg.dynalias.org/~jack/P1010816.JPG[/url]”>http://grinberg.dynalias.org/~jack/P1010816.JPG&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

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<p>Um I’m pretty sure the cutoff must be lower than 127. Someone who got in got a 127, someone else got a 121 (who didn’t get in), so I’m guessing the cutoff must be between there somewhere. Did anyone score lower than 127?</p>

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<p>WOW. If that’s true, I missed the cutoff by officially .75. WOW.</p>

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<p>Ouch, that really sucks. Better luck next year ;)</p>

<p>Roffle, there are two David Huangs at finals this year. Spelled exactly the same, from different states.</p>

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<p>Bleh. 123.5 I knew I should have studied more than just the AP Bio review book. -_-</p>

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<p>Hey asong. Im going to try for the exam next year. Do you think you could give me some of the materials they released to you to prepare? I would like to study over the summer. thanks
~Nikhil Mehandru</p>