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Re: MIT Invitational 2018

Posted: February 24th, 2018, 4:36 am
by knottingpurple
GeorgeOrwell77 wrote:Do you need to be invited to the MIT Invitational or is it whoever registers first?
Whoever registers first is able to attend the invitational, much like most other invitationals I've heard of - registration does fill up within minutes, though, so this is quite difficult.

Re: MIT Invitational 2018

Posted: March 6th, 2018, 6:12 am
by CarrieFisher
nicholasmaurer wrote:
pikachu4919 wrote:
knottingpurple wrote:
My team is also pretty much student run, and I think favoritism isn't too big a deal - each of the years I've done Science Olympiad, one of our officers hasn't made the States team. Like, we have officers who are sensible enough to say yes I put in a lot of work organising tryouts but other people outperformed me in my events so they should take my spot. We also admitted more people than we can technically take to any of our competitions, so there's competition for States and a Regionals spots but since invites are on weekends, we normally still have more spots than people. I would imagine MIT would be considered more important than any of the invites we go to, but regardless, especially if you go to several invitationals, I would imagine teams have no problem giving everyone a chance to compete and also taking all their top people to their most important competitions.

Of course I don't speak for Mason, their team might be very different from mine, but I don't see how what they've said of their team format would necessarily be a problem.
My team was also heavily student-run, and sometimes, in the case that the students do more of the running of the team than the coach does, it actually could possibly be a bit better for student captains to make decisions on most of this since most likely, the captains have had more interaction with the rest of the team members than the coach has and thus, would know more about who's right for the spots. Granted, teenagers may not always have the best judgements, so, my senior year, all of us captains made an agreement that if we disagreed on something to do with making teams, we would consult the coach then and get her input from her observations of everyone, but we definitely trusted each other on making the right decisions, and sometimes, the right decision was clear enough that none of us captains really had much to disagree on. But I'm sure many student-run teams aren't like ours either, so I cannot speak for them as well.
Our team at Solon HS is heavily student-run, including producing schedules for each invitational we attend. As coaches we provide input and guidance, but most of the decisions are handed by our co-captains. I personally believe allowing the students to run most of the club gives them increased ownership of, and motivation towards, success.
Our program is similar in that the captains make schedules for each invitational we attend. Our coaches provide input and guidance too, but most of the decisions are handled by our captains. I believe that allowing the students to run most of the club gives us increased ownership of success, but not really any motivation. Any tips?

Re: MIT Invitational 2018

Posted: March 6th, 2018, 8:42 am
by nicholasmaurer
CarrieFisher wrote: Our program is similar in that the captains make schedules for each invitational we attend. Our coaches provide input and guidance too, but most of the decisions are handled by our captains. I believe that allowing the students to run most of the club gives us increased ownership of success, but not really any motivation. Any tips?
Set a reasonably attainable goal for the season and work towards that. I would also encourage you to attend as many invitational tournaments as possible. People tend to be motivated to study/build when they are competing soon, rather than in several weeks or months. A busy invitational season keeps up the pressure to perform.

Re: MIT Invitational 2018

Posted: June 5th, 2018, 11:29 am
by dvegadvol
How about releasing this year's test archive for those of us who couldn't make it to the competition?

It's after Nationals! :D :D :D

Thanks

Re: MIT Invitational 2018

Posted: June 5th, 2018, 4:29 pm
by kate!
dvegadvol wrote:How about releasing this year's test archive for those of us who couldn't make it to the competition?

It's after Nationals! :D :D :D

Thanks
MIT tests are prohibited from being traded; that's why they have watermarks. You're only allowed to access them if you went to the competition, and if it's found out you traded them, your school is put on a blacklist. Even if you wanted to go but couldn't make it, you still aren't allowed to see the tests no matter what year it is.

Re: MIT Invitational 2018

Posted: June 5th, 2018, 4:33 pm
by knottingpurple
kate! wrote:
dvegadvol wrote:How about releasing this year's test archive for those of us who couldn't make it to the competition?

It's after Nationals! :D :D :D

Thanks
MIT tests are prohibited from being traded; that's why they have watermarks. You're only allowed to access them if you went to the competition, and if it's found out you traded them, your school is put on a blacklist. Even if you wanted to go but couldn't make it, you still aren't allowed to see the tests no matter what year it is.
This was true up until Nationals, but officially, MIT's policy is that after Nationals their tests will be made public. If you click on the link for 2018 tests on scioly.mit.edu/archive, it does say that the tests will be released after Nationals 2018.

EDIT: And all prior years of MIT are public. Some of the old links are supposedly broken, but definitely the 2017 MIT tests we used from the website this season.