MIT Invitational 2017

[Luo]

Science Olympiad at MIT is extraordinarily excited to host the third annual MIT Science Olympiad Invitational Tournament on Saturday, January 21, 2017, on the campus of MIT in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The tournament website is http://scioly.mit.edu/.

Registration opens Wednesday, September 14, 2016, at 1:00 PM ET. The registration policies and registration form can be found at http://scioly.mit.edu/registration/. Last year, all available spots filled up within 48 hours of registration opening, so we encourage you to register as soon as possible. This year, only the first 15 schools that register two teams will be immediately allocated spots for both teams. Later-registering schools may still register two teams, but only one spot will be immediately allocated, and the second team will be placed on a waitlist. The purpose of this new policy is to include a greater number of schools in the tournament than in previous years.

All of the team-friendly and coach-friendly features you've come to expect of the MIT tournament will be back in full force. We'll run all 23 Division C national events, including lab and engineering events, with a schedule mirroring the national tournament schedule as closely as possible. All events will be written, reviewed, and run by Science Olympiad alumni currently at MIT, national tournament event supervisors, and/or former national tournament medalists. This means that coaches will not be required to write tests or otherwise volunteer at the invitational, leaving them free to focus solely on coaching their own teams. And, of course, competitors will get a chance to see the beauty and craziness of MIT with campus tours on tournament day.

We are incredibly proud that the MIT Science Olympiad Invitational Tournament has attracted teams from 17 U.S. states, including many of the biggest names from across the country: Troy, Harriton, Solon, LASA, Seven Lakes, Fayetteville-Manlius, Acton-Boxborough, Bayard Rustin, Columbia, Boca Raton, Archimedean Conservatory, Waynflete, and Chattahoochee, to name a few. We were proud to see that more than half of the top 20 teams at this year's national tournament had attended the MIT invitational earlier in the year. Nonetheless, from the beginning, we've been committed to making the MIT invitational accessible to all teams, regardless of past experience or past success. We are proud to have hosted a bevy of new and up-and-coming teams for whom the MIT invitational was the first invitational they had ever attended, giving them a rare chance to field-test their teamwork and skills in advance of their respective state tournaments. We strive to make every event challenging yet accessible to all, and we strive to make the tournament process as easy for coaches who have attended zero tournaments as for coaches who have attended 100.

Stephen Tang and Katie Shade will be directors of this year's tournament - they can be reached at scioly [at] mit [dot] edu. Stephen, a fourth year chemistry student at MIT, is a wildly successful Science Olympiad alumnus and has been an integral part of Science Olympiad at MIT since the very beginning. Katie, a third year computer science student at MIT, is likewise a decorated former Science Olympiad competitor who has been a indispensable contributor to both previous MIT invitationals. Both Stephen and Katie possess the vision and energy that embody Science Olympiad at MIT and the innovative spirit that embodies Science Olympiad at large.

The goal of Science Olympiad at MIT remains to uniquely enrich the Science Olympiad experience of high school students in New England and across the country. To that end, I hope to see you all at the tournament in January.

[Luo]

I'm amazed to report that as of 1:40 PM ET today, registration for the MIT Science Olympiad Invitational Tournament is closed. We were absolutely astounded by the deluge of interest we received immediately upon registration opening, and all confirmed spots in the invitational were filled in less than 40 minutes. We apologize to teams who were unable to complete the registration form in this unexpectedly narrow window of time.

We encourage teams still interested in attending the MIT Science Olympiad Invitational Tournament to secure a spot on the tournament waitlist by filling out the waitlist form at http://scioly.mit.edu/registration/. We will notify teams on the waitlist of their status no later than mid-November, and most likely by mid-October. In the meantime, teams on the waitlist should not mail the tournament registration fee.