USABO Advice

Pre-College Issues High School Life
1

<p>I'm thinking of competing in the USABO next year as a junior, so I wanted to know a couple of questions. What should I expect? Is the competition hard? Will taking AP Biology and a college course in Biotechnology help? Any helpful advice?</p>

<p>Thanks in advance.</p>

2

<p>Bump please...</p>

3

<p>Anyone have any advice?</p>

4

<p>Just read the Campbell biology text, it contains most eveything you need to know for the open exam.</p>

5

<p>Thanks! Anyone have more advice?</p>

6

<p>its very hard, no sarcasm. I was at the top of my class and I started preparing in December. I ended up with a 29 (cutoff was 30) :( In terms of advice, you need to either have completed AP Bio or have read the book on your own and know the material very well. Its a lot harder than AP or SAT II.</p>

7

<p>ARGH! The fact that I took AP Bio in 10th grade makes me feel worse for not knowing about olympiads sooner...and after next year it will be all over...****in POSschool....</p>

8

<p>i'm going to the international physics olympiad this year (repping team USA), so this isn't directly relevant to biology, but a good piece of general advice for the math/science olympiads is to check out old exams from previous years. those will teach you more directly relevant things than any individual book or course. to borrow an oft-used quote about the sat, olympiads test you primarily on how good you are on olympiads.</p>

9

<p>but there are no open exam questions available to the general public...</p>

10

<p>oh, didn't know that. i assumed it was like math or physics.</p>

11

<p>I beg to differ piccolo: <a href="http://www.cee.org/usabo/teacherrc/kit/questions/%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.cee.org/usabo/teacherrc/kit/questions/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

12

<p>AP Bio is of course a good start on the path to USABO, but it's not going to be enough just to take that (biotech courses will help a little, too, but nowhere near as much as AP Bio will). You'll have to learn independent biology stuff that will never be taught in a classroom.</p>

13

<p>It is pretty hard. I was taking AP bio when I took the test, and qualified for the semifinals. I think I got 40/50 or something. The second test was a lot harder. I got a lot of the MC questions but the FR questions were killer. </p>

<p>I was not serious about it at all. If you really want to do well, you should start memorizing the Campbell textbook. Everything you need to know is in there.</p>

14

<p>What edition of Campbells?</p>

15

<p>The tests this year were based on the 7th Edition. It's on the website i believe.</p>

16

<p>Simply memorizing Campbell isn't nearly enough. You'll probably get past the open, but the semifinal will be hard if the only bio you know is Campbell. The biology olympiad requires a lot of diverse knowledge that just isn't touched in Amercian schools.</p>

17

<p>this year sucked cuz they rehashed problems from 2005 (and I didnt compte in 2005!)so the cut off was really high...its usually around 26/27/28....other wise i wouldve made it booo</p>

18

<p>What kind of questions are they if they are a lot harder than the SAT and AP? Are they just more specific or have tricky answer choices?</p>

19

<p>I hear there are two additional textbooks recommended if one wants to make it past semis...they're on the CEE website, and one focuses on molecular biology whereas the other on ecology....</p>

20

<p>go there:</p>

<p><a href="http://www.cee.org/usabo/usabo_preparing.shtml%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.cee.org/usabo/usabo_preparing.shtml&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>seriously...all u need is campbells for the open exam...not even. You can get away with like the student study guide from campbells or maybe a really good ap review book (cliffs/barrons). do the canadian practice problems...sometimes they have the same problems except the wording is a little different.</p>