Celestite wrote:Nah, I was just there to watch the Scrambler event. Coincidentally, I saw WWP-N go.
I'm from UCVTS. I did the events Designer Genes and Rocks and Minerals
(Yes that means SilverNight knows exactly who I am. Hey
) For Rocks, they got the test exactly from online. (
This one, word for word)I went back home and looked it up and compared answers. I got only 1 wrong, taking the test based on what I knew and not what I remembered from the online test
I studied hard too, it was just that I looked over the tests before regionals and didn't look at that specific test right before the competition, so I messed up. Still, I thought that taking the test from online was something that didn't measure our abilities, and the supervisors really could have done better.
I know how you feel (somewhat), because while I didn't compete in NJ SO in any test events, I did compete for the
right to compete at state in these testing events against my team mates. But you know what? My captains just took the compound machines test from this very site (test exchange). And conveniently enough, they neglected to tell me that the sci oly rules explicitly labeled what the six simple machines to be used and tested were. So I thought I was being smart and said gears, inclined plane (a wedge is simply two inclined planes put together), lever, screw, wheel and axle,and pulley. Well, apparently it's plane, screw, wheel/axle, lever, wedge, and pulley. lovely.
And they did this with ALL of the tests to be taken that were up for grabs. People who placed last year in an event got it this year, which i don't understand either. Sci oly is extremely dynamic in certain instances. Case in point? We got 2nd last year in designer genes. This year? 11th.
Anyways, I digress. As discussed with magicalforest, we're writing letters (via coach) to make sure that this situation never happens again. Luo kindly offered help, and I fail to see why NJ SO never responded.
UQOnyx wrote:I also want to know how much the state competition has to adhere with the Science Olympiad rules. Are they required to follow the rules exactly, or can they deviate from it if they choose to?
I am slightly upset also about how Robo-cross was run. There were two incidents that happened, one affecting only me and one affecting everyone else. Several people, myself possibly included as they didn't tell us were teired down because of a frankly horrible interpretation of the rules. I saw this for one other team, and I am pretty sure that it happened to several others. Once the ES called stop, they put their remote down and stopped the robot from moving. But for some reason, their robot twitched after that, either because in turning off the robot, the servos twitched, or just as a tiny fault in the signal. They got tiered down for that. The same thing happened to us.. Either I am wrong which is a possibility, or it was a way too strict adherence to the rules. I don't think a team who put so much effort and time into their project, not to mention the enourmous amount of money should see all their hard work go down the drain because of a tiny unforeseeable error or discrepancy.
The second part...
Right before we started our run, I noticed that a few things were wrong on the playing field by a few inches... Being stressed and tense to not think about it, I didn't mention it until after the run, which we did pretty bad at. The ES's reviewed the footage, said yes you are right, but we will not give you another run even though you are right because the other teams would make a fuss and they didn't want to deal with that... We had the potential to get a different score, and it wasn't our fault that the field was set up wrong. It should have been their responsibility to fix their goof up as we weren't given the same advantage/chance as everyone else.
Anyways though, raging aside, I was impressed with the building events, especially in Boomilevers. I have to say though, even though division C looks pretty hard, or competition seems very fierce, it REALLY is not. I kind of sneaked a look
at the boomilevers team score sheet and I have to say, the majority of the teams are not good at all. I think for division B, there were only two other teams over 600 (the top three teams) with the rest around 200. The same, maybe a tiny bit higher for division C. As a word of advice, though I'm still in eighth grade, I've been in Science Olympiad for three years so far. Don't be intimidated. It really really isn't that difficult. I hope to be staying in my division B team (our C team sucks) and probably mentoring and training the newbies. It's still a problem though as nearly all of our medalling members were in eighth grade (about 12) and we can take only 5 next year.
We don't know what to do...
The state could apparently interpret the sci oly rules just as we can find loop holes in the event rules differently. I mean, we saw what happened with ward-melville. the national director kindly asked the nyso director to reconsider, but apparently, it's not like he could have forced anything. States, to me, seem to have a sort of individual sovereignty when it comes to national rules. Some states have a dif rocks and minerals list. Other states have different interpretations on the same rules (you can find one clarification on the NJ site, and you might not find it on the NY site for example).
Haha, I saw people using their hands to support the bucket for boomilever at times. I didn't really like how the judges weren't watching at all times.
And um, the "tiny bit higher for division c" you're talking about is 400 points, give or take. Top 3 teams for us? Montclair bairly broke 1000. West Windsor South got around 1200. And JP Stevens got 1340
. Actually, we could of got 1400+. The pair doing the event spent 7 minutes trying to set up. Well, the bucket started touching the floor during the official run, so we had no time to fix it. We just figured we might as well test what it would have gotten after we got our official score, and there we go. 1470.
Nearly 12 of you medal placing folks are graduating? Isn't that enough for a team at the C level? I'm sure you could find some more smart AND dedicated people in the time frame of now till regions.
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Yeah, in general, anyone feeling NJSO is becoming severely monopolized now? It's usually the same 5 or 6 teams at the top every year, with the SAME teams at the top 2. I don't know. I feel like NJSO is losing its competitiveness in general across its teams, and there's no one really to blame for that specifically. My school is suffering from what I dub "the Plainsboro Effect" The idea is that West Windsor South has been winning states for the past 6 years now, so most of my team doesn't see any point in trying hard. Oh, maybe they'll work hard individually and try to do well on a individual level, trying to place for a medal. But there's no team interaction. There's no collective effort amongst all of our builders (who could easily and effectively tackle problems together and share ideas if they wanted). There's no drive. And that, to me, is alarming. Anyone else?
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