USABO 2016-2017

DEF NOT. You may remember some questions and do your homework. All test administrators are REQUIRED to destroy all papers after the exam.

How many questions on the test were from 2003-2013?

Also, does anyone have open exams 2014-2016?

Here are the released tests from 2003-2013. http://biolympiads.com/2015/01/usabo-past-papers-to-download.html I think the number of questions varied.

How is your score calculated?

By the way, did a practice test (2013 USABO) and scored 37/50. Is that good?

@thunderlight8 Ye its pretty good. The cutoff varies every year, but I believe the cut off for 2013 was 25. I think 2010 had the lowest cutoff score, which was a 21. I got a 36 on the 2010 test. They say that this year’s test is the hardest one yet. I recommend taking all the open exams first. When you are finished, you can start taking the semi final exams which you can find here:

http://www.rtmsd.org/Page/12253

Does anyone know of a good animal physiology book that is not an overkill for USABO? Also, if anyone here has made it to camp before, did you just study Campbell or did you study raven’s and Albert’s as well?

For those of you who took this year’s exam, were there a good number of questions from previous years’ exams?

Hi, for past papers contact www.biolympiads.com. There is a post about cutoffs in their blog.

For cutoffs the post is here: USABO 2014-2016 CUTOFFS http://biolympiads.com/2017/02/usabo-open-exam-cutoffs.html

@Martyynyyte thank for posting that link! Just wondering- does it say the cutoff on there? I checked and it had the charts with a standard data set but no cutoff. Also @IvanIvanIvan I too would want to know the answer to that question however I don’t think anybody would be willing to share that kind of info nor do I think its permitted- CC has pretty strict policies. I would say just take all the exams posted posted (and maybe the semis too) and hope for the best!

You can always find the cutoff score by looking through the forums for that year. For example, in order to find the 2016 cutoff, go to the 2016 forum, and skip to early March, and look through the comments.

what about a score of 32 on the 2013 open exam

@KiaAfzali what did you get on the 2013 open?

One more thing to finally CLARIFY

say if we have a question … select all the following and in this case A C E are the answers

A
B
C
D
E

would putting only A get you .33

A and C get you .66

and if you put A and B you get 0 Right?

Are those kinds of questions on the open exam? I though they only showed up on the semi-final exam.

*thought

I got a 32 on the 2013 one as well. I found that one to be the most difficult, even though it does not have the lowest cutoff.

@Anonymous1418 They have been on the open exams since either 2010 or 2011.

@BRDTCMPV I believe that’s how it works, because some people get score like 33.53.