<p>look for yourself, 586 people took the semifinal exam so just count to the 57th person </p>
<p>146 is the cut off for top 10% on SF exam.</p>
<p>@BeanDelphiki You were right about Mira Loma winning. They crushed everybody lol. I gotta say I was impressed by their speed today. </p>
<p>anyone have any idea when they’re going to officially release the SF 10% cutoffs with respective certificates? </p>
<p>botherme how the heck did u manage to achieve such a high score on the semifinals? i mean did u take memorize everything in the campbell book and read other books as well? i barely got past the open at the level im at… (from a curious and very impressed freshman)</p>
<p>If you want to be impressed with someone, find that person who scored 204 holy crap that’s not even funny how high it is! tbh, you’re better off than I was if you made semifinals as a freshman-- gratz! I didn’t even make it 
For this year, I read campbell’s and raven’s, then reviewed them until I knew the main points . I didn’t go too deep, i.e. don’t know respiration/ amino acid structures and stuff but I know basic properties. I guess I just really tried to know the stuff well since those books seem to be so important.</p>
<p>It’s so impressive how much you got better at this since last year
you should share some of your study skills haha</p>
<p>holy crap u read through both textbooks? dang thats dedication right there. better than reading an AP bio barrons book the day before like me lol. guess ima have to read all that in the summer…</p>
<p>Here’s my two cents for aspiring USABOers:</p>
<p>The most important thing is to read Campbell. Read it more than once, and try to remember as much as possible, especially the diagrams. (Sorry xxronin) (You can be slightly easier on yourself on the evolutionary history part though) </p>
<p>Know EVERYTHING about hormones, both animal and plant— what they do, where they’re from, chemical class, how they’re regulated, hormonal disorders, etc. etc. etc. Campbell, Wikipedia, and any advanced human physiology textbook are great for this. If you don’t know, you shall be sad on the Semifinals when you leave half of Part C blank.</p>
<p>Know back and forth PCR and the three types of blotting (even though nobody really does Northern and Southern blotting anymore). Though this hasn’t really appeared much (yet), I would recommend knowing Sanger Sequencing. Fully know the procedure, and the mechanism behind each step, and fully know how to interpret results and errors. For the lab skills, I don’t think Campbell is sufficient. Cell biology textbooks and Wikipedia are very good sources. Otherwise, you shall be sad when you leave the other half of Part C blank.</p>
<p>It’s well worth it to read Raven, even though some of it’s beyond the scope of the test. </p>
<p>Lastly, do practice exams over and over again, even the ones with crappy questions. Half of the test is reasoning, believe it or not. If you run out, try and find some extremely hard questions (especially genetics) (GRE is on the easy side of hard).</p>
<p>Hope this helps! 
</p>
<p>Also, test prep books suck in general.</p>
<p>I’d second the textbook recommendations. I managed to make camp this year with just campbell, though I did read it about half a dozen times over the last year and a half. Now, I’m reading Raven’s for camp and I’m starting to realize how much material from it I’ve seen on tests! I’d recommend you read both, but if you do a bunch of tests and work on your reasoning skills, campbell will cut it</p>
<p>lol thanks a bunch man, i really appreciate u guys giving me advice. but yeah it was my first time taking this test and neither my teacher nor i had any idea wat the heck was going on. thank god my pap bio class kinda prepped me for the open (def not for semis tho…) :^o </p>
<p>Yes. Campbell is the most important thing. Although I’m not the best person to give advice since I’m no finalist,</p>
<p>A lot part of USABO is about being motivated. These materials are not the kind of things you will see in normal classes. Also, unlike most of the other olympiads, this requires tremendous amount of reading, reviewing, and understanding. Just competitiveness or trying to get something on your resume will rarely be enough to push you to read such thick book over and over again. Be interested in the material. Feel excited as you turn to the next page to uncover the wonders of life you’ve never known before. </p>
<p>I feel like a large part doing USABO is doing past semi finalist exams. I started reading Campbell’s during Winter Break last year, and unlike some of the posters here, I only really had time to read through Campbell’s about twice, and briefly glanced through the Ravens, but what really helped me was reviewing past semifinal exams since they seem to really like to repeat questions(well not exactly the same but basically the same wreaks owning style) on certain topics, especially genetics and ethology, and after going through all the past semis, I felt like my scores on semifinal tests jumped a lot. </p>
<p>how are you guys studying for finals? I’ve been so busy with APs that I haven’t had much time…</p>
<p>I’ve been pretty busy with AP’s, science olympiad, and making up for all this missed school in advance too haha. Right now, I’m just reading Raven’s since I only read Campbell before Semis. After that, I’ll probably review Campbell and look for other textbooks…</p>
<p>Did any one get the Top 10% certificates from CEE? They mentioned that the certificates have already sent out toth teachers one week ago.</p>
<p>@abacus1
I got it </p>
<p>Do you guys know what type of calculator the finalists get? </p>
<p>@botherme Should we read Raven’s Biology or Raven’s Biology of Plants?</p>
<p>Hi y’all, just wanted to bump this thread and maybe introduce myself.
I’m Jamie from Taiwan, I’ll be a senior in September, and I’m currently studying for my third attempt at the CTBO (Chinese Taipei Biology Olympiad). I also am studying for my college entrance exams which in my opinion are way harder than biology competitions. Or maybe I just suck at everything else.</p>
<p>In Taiwan, the selection process is a bot complicated. There are two ways to start out. The first one is the Biology Ability Competition, where you go through a hierarchy of school prelims+finals/local exam/national exams. The BAC, like the IBO, is made up of theoretical and practical sections. 10 people from the national exams end up in camp, along with 30 from the CTBO semi round. From these forty people, 4 are selected for the IBO team.</p>
<p>Like almost everyone else on Earth we regard Campbell as gospel and practically worship it. But I’ve been looking into specific books and while everyone here opts for Chinese books (either Chinese translations of the original text or simplified textbooks from China which are way more affordable) I prefer textbooks written in English. Since I don’t exactly want my mother to find out I’ve been studying for CTBO and spending a good part of my allowance on textbooks, I only have the option of digging for gold in the used-book stores. </p>
<p>I’ve got Campbell, Life by Sadava, Vander’s Physio, Molles’ Eco, and am trying to secure a copy of Alberts’ and Raven’s plus maybe a genetics book , IDK. People say you can get to semis here using Campbell alone, but then semis=top 200~300 of all CTBO prelim participants. Missed the semis last year by 0.8 pts, and I want to make sure I get in this time. I also took a quick look at USABO open round questions, and they are <em>slightly</em> easier than CTBO prelims, but still I am nowhere near finalist level right now.</p>
<p>Anyway, I felt compelled to post something since I’ve been lurking for a long time, and actually learnt a lot from these threads. Good luck everyone-I hope I get to meet you in Denmark next summer. </p>