Test Writing (for competitions)

[aakoala]

Hi everyone! I have recently started writing tests for practice, and I have a few questions about getting my work to actual competitions.
I am in division B, so there's a very small chance that my work could end up at a competition for the next few years.

1. That being said, are there any requirements for writing a test for a competition? For example, is there an age limit/competition experience requirement?
2. Are there specific people you need to get in contact with to have a chance for writing a test?
3. Is there a process for actually signing up to write a test, and if so, how do you choose who is the best?
4. Is there a group of people that competitions know to write good tests, and if so, how do you build your way up to that level?

[aakoala]

Hey!
Most of those questions are actually strongly dependent on the tournament. For example, some tournaments this past year (*cough*Socorro*cough*) were in need of someone to write tests, so they were willing to take on anyone who wanted to write, including Division B students. Some tournaments will only take on alumni, or have stringent requirements for their writers. These are typically bigger tournaments with a good reputation, or stakes tournaments, like regionals or states. A smaller invitational is probably what you'd have the best chance at because they are typically more in need of writers.

As for specific people, the tournament director is the person to email about it. Some competitions have a sign-up form, but for the most part you have to email the director in order to write. It makes everything easier if you happen to know the director from somewhere, but that's not totally necessary. It might help if you also give them some examples of what you have done in the past so that they know you are capable? Not totally sure... (DISCLAIMER: I have minimal experience here, I haven't actually cold-emailed any tournaments, I'm mostly speaking from small high school invitational director side).

The process for signing up is totally tournament-dependent. In some, it's just emailing the director and waiting for them to say "yep good to go" or reject you. In others, it's more complicated. It's difficult to know.

Four is all about practice and experience . Once you start to write enough, you pick up tricks to making good tests, and you have more tournament experience under your belt to get your reputation out there more.

Good luck! Hope you find somewhere to write for and have fun!!
And if you don't manage to, or you want to get a little extra test-writing practice, I'll leave a plug for the test exchange here

[aakoala]

I think everything RiverWalker mentioned was excellent advice. Building off what they said:

• I agree with RiverWalker that it's easier to start by helping out at smaller tournaments. RiverWalker mentioned Socorro; for me, it was writing a Solar System test for a regional in Texas (that I didn't compete in) during the 2014-2015 season. These tournaments usually won't have any sort of "application process" to be an ES since they need all the help, so there weren't really any "requirements". I've noticed that regional tournaments and tournaments run by small high schools/new university alumni groups often fall into this category.
• For larger (more popular) competitions, there's often an "application" to be an ES. The UT Invitational and Regional both have one, for example. I'm in an advisory position now, so I'm no longer directly involved with the ES selection process anymore, but typically we focus on experience competing in the events they're applying for and their test writing philosophy. In some cases, event supervising experience is also important (particularly for build/hybrid events, in my experience), but we try not to emphasize that too much. A lot of the best event supervisors end up being first year college students, and we know that everyone has to start somewhere in terms of supervising. The UT ES selection process is essentially the same as that of MIT's, which is outlined here.
• Regarding writing better tests and "building your way up to that level": in my experience, focusing on conceptual questions that "built up to something" really helped me. These are pretty difficult to do well; your "explain" questions shouldn't be something where a competitor can regurgitate an explanation they memorized. As an ES, I try and write my questions in a way that they present a scenario or present data and make the competitor think about it in a way that they normally wouldn't, which forces them to actually know what's going on in order to give the correct answer. As I write the questions, I ask myself questions like "what questions would you be trying to answer as a scientist?", "what challenges would you face in collecting this data?", and "what observational biases exist in the data collection?", and try to incorporate those concepts into the questions themselves. Writing for SSSS over the summer in 2016 was the first time I felt like I had written a test that actually had some thought-provoking questions, and it was what "got my name out there" in terms of test writing. I really recommend it for the future in case you haven't tried writing for it yet.