2022 National Tournament: California Institute of Technology

Pastaman202
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Re: 2022 National Tournament: California Institute of Technology

Post by Pastaman202 »

Envirochem (8th):

I dug this account from the grave to just write about this one test. Holy jesus christ was this test hot garbage. Not only were about 100 questions in a row just "find the line", but a striaght up 9 of those questions had the exact same answers even. And the actual "chem" portions wouldn't reward you based on your chem knowledge, but just how many numbers can u plug into your calc with a comical amount of sigfigs, with the worst quality ptable in existence. How did they allow the same test writer from last year's disastrous nats chem lab test manage to write not only soni, but this year's nats test as well. Overall, while I hope in person comps will be much better for this event, this event was doomed to fail, and despite taking dozens of tests for this event, when I have to inevitably write next year's tryout test, I honestly have no clue what this event is even about. You know the test was also bad when the moment we saw the first question, my partner and I screamed "ITS THAT GUY"
-10000/10

Chem Lab(3rd):
Overall, outside of the exact repeated questions from SONI, most of the test was pretty good, not much to complain about overall. Take this review with a grain of salt, as once again, our team has failed to beat new trier to contiune out 100% loss streak (new trier guy is now the boogeyman of our chem events). But yea those repeated questions were pretty dissapointing, esp since my partner and I looked over the test like day of comp, so our score was probs not deserved honestly
8/10
Orni: (12th):
Overall very well written test, difficulty very nice, and while some of the question formats were IMO not possible with the time allotted, I'm also jsut bad at this event.
10/10
IAT(8th):
really fiending those 8ths, but once again, test was pretty good, but a tad bit too easy (id be surprised if any in the top 10 got below 90%), and using zoom for precise timing will always be sketchy with the whole delay stuff.
8/10

Overall (6th):
while our team once again failed to break top 5 (this time by 2 pts, noooo), this years tests were a big step up from last years, which isnt necessarily a good thing, since its now just "ok" instead of "rly bad", but obviously the drawback was once again the remote setting, and seeing every other club travelling again its very sad to just have the same old satellite style, but what can you do. I really hope next year nats is in person again, so i can find whoever wrote envirochem and yell at them
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Re: 2022 National Tournament: California Institute of Technology

Post by mnoga »

SONica wrote: May 24th, 2022, 5:55 pm
Umaroth wrote: May 23rd, 2022, 7:34 pm
SONica wrote: May 23rd, 2022, 2:24 pm

What have changed in Sierra Vista? Impressive!
New coaches as of last season (the former Kraemer coach, the former Jeffrey Trail coach, my former cocaptain from Kraemer, and myself). Always had the potential like Jeffrey Trail being in the same district (literally 10 minutes away), now it's unleashed :D
Congratulations! Definitely alpha team.
It looks like NorCal and SoCal tied this year. Let's plan on meeting at Wichita St. next year to settle the score. ;)
Last edited by mnoga on May 25th, 2022, 3:30 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: 2022 National Tournament: California Institute of Technology

Post by legendaryalchemist »

Astronomy (3rd):

Based on my partner's feedback, the DSO section contained some unusual questions. At a couple of points, it even asked about objects which were not DSOs. I would've preferred more variety in the types of calculations, but in general, the calculations this year were a huge step up from last year. I appreciated that we were warned ahead of time that JS9 would be used, I don't have any major complaints about the general knowledge section, and the test length was pretty close to ideal. Also, not having questions copied off of previous years' tests is another improvement from last year. This event has been my pride and joy for a long time, and I really thought we would win based on how we had been performing all year. Ultimately, we lost to two outstanding teams - congrats Mason and New Trier.

8/10

Codebusters (19th):

This event has been the bane of my existence for years. No matter how many practice codes we do, we just can't seem to get on the same level as the elite teams. This year was a decent year for code, but unfortunately, we just performed poorly at nationals. It was a bit disappointing to not see Toebes implemented and have to take a normal Scilympiad code test, but at least the event was able to run without hiccups. The test itself was very well-written, with so many varied questions that each team was able to show their strengths. Our 19th-place finish can be attributed to the timed question, which after 4 years of training, I just choked on. It was our slowest timed question of the year and that hurt our team's overall placement. This is more of a rules complaint, but I do not think the timed bonus should be worth as much as it is. One team solving the timed question five minutes sooner than another is equivalent to solving 5-6 extra questions, and having such a large bonus means that the last 40 minutes of the test almost become irrelevant. That worked in our favor last year and against us this year, but I think it's too much regardless. Congrats to Troy on the victory.

9/10

Experimental Design (7th):

For some reason, I really thought that the topic was going to be Earth science-related: perhaps erosion or runoff patterns or something else using the sand or soil. Dead wrong. Maybe I should've anticipated that Caltech was just going to pick a random physics term out of a hat and have that be the national topic, especially after the National Invite. Moment of Inertia isn't a bad topic, I just thought it would be something more...creative. The initial materials list was definitely good though, as it left the door open for just about any topic. For our performance, we just took a little bit too long to think of our experiment, and the time we lost cost us a few points on the final sections. Being one place away from a medal is always frustrating, especially because of how close the scores always are at the top of this event. Congrats to Solon, the team that's been kicking our butt in ED all year.

6/10

Remote Sensing (7th):

Another 7th place, although this one is less disappointing because I wasn't expecting to medal. I'm not sure why all of the questions asked for multiple-sentence responses when there wasn't really enough time for that - the test length may have been slightly longer than ideal. There was far too much image analysis and not enough conceptual questions, but the questions themselves were reasonable. I also think the point values on multiple-choice planetary energy balance questions were too high, but this worked in my favor with my astronomy background. I wish I had been able to study this event more deeply than I did, as it seems really interesting, but the tests also vary a lot from tournament to tournament. Congrats to the same Mason team that won Astronomy.

6/10

Overall (4th/230):

Not having an in-person national tournament is certainly regrettable, especially with so much of the world now opened up. While actually being able to go to Caltech would've been awesome, the tournament was still run well in the virtual format. Our team was lucky enough to have several in-person competitions next year and it's exciting that next year, nearly everything should be back in-person. While I might not be satisfied with my individual performance, taking 4th as a team was a pleasant surprise and it met all the team goals we had for the season. Congrats to Mason on the national title. We have worked so hard over the past few years to build this program up from a new team to a contender in Wisconsin to a contender on the national level, and it's great to see those efforts pay off. We were also surprisingly close to winning the whole thing - only 16 points away. While it's easy to delve into the what-ifs that could've brought us a national title, I ultimately think we were the 4th best team at nationals and deserved to be exactly where we ended up. It's been wonderful watching my team, my friends, and myself grow over the past four years and I'm gonna miss competing in Science Olympiad.

10/10
Last edited by legendaryalchemist on May 27th, 2022, 3:09 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: 2022 National Tournament: California Institute of Technology

Post by Unome »

legendaryalchemist wrote: May 27th, 2022, 3:03 pmRemote Sensing (7th):

Another 7th place, although this one is less disappointing because I wasn't expecting to medal. I'm not sure why all of the questions asked for multiple-sentence responses when there wasn't really enough time for that - the test length may have been slightly longer than ideal. There was far too much image analysis and not enough conceptual questions, but the questions themselves were reasonable. I also think the point values on multiple-choice planetary energy balance questions were too high, but this worked in my favor with my astronomy background. I wish I had been able to study this event more deeply than I did, as it seems really interesting, but the tests also vary a lot from tournament to tournament. Congrats to the same Mason team that won Astronomy.

6/10
I was not involved with this test, but for my own reference - what sort of point values were you seeing that you thought were too high for the planetary energy balance?
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Re: 2022 National Tournament: California Institute of Technology

Post by awesomeaidan123 »

Codebusters (7th):
Probably one of the best tests I have ever taken, simply so much diversity in questions and we hit a pb in timed question. I usually struggle on online code tests but we got it all done perfectly, still mad about scrolling past an affine which probably got us 7th, but it is what it is. All in all 9.5/10

Bio-Process Lab (31th? or 32nd, I forgot):
Solid test, BPL has always been weak and inconsistent and I didn't even do it at states. Good questions and overall 7/10

WIDI (47th):
I must say, blood can boil. Jeez, I still don't see how you can possibly stack cards like that. I was a writer and was generally distracted most of test. Fell on some details and my partner and I struggled so much with paper WIDIs. Lastly, my partner just kinda skipped a few steps but we gotta move on. 9th at States was good enough.

Overall (18th):
It was our 1st year at NATS and after 2yrs placing 3rd in the NY States, getting to Nationals feels great (ESPECIALLY WITH 1st AT NATS) . This is my first year taking scioly seriously but I must say, it was 100% worth it. We only had 1 medal but were very consistent across the board, with only 2 true outliers, WIDI included :(. Now onto NATS 2023!!!
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Re: 2022 National Tournament: California Institute of Technology

Post by SONica »

mnoga wrote: May 25th, 2022, 3:29 pm
SONica wrote: May 24th, 2022, 5:55 pm
Umaroth wrote: May 23rd, 2022, 7:34 pm

New coaches as of last season (the former Kraemer coach, the former Jeffrey Trail coach, my former cocaptain from Kraemer, and myself). Always had the potential like Jeffrey Trail being in the same district (literally 10 minutes away), now it's unleashed :D
Congratulations! Definitely alpha team.
It looks like NorCal and SoCal tied this year. Let's plan on meeting at Wichita St. next year to settle the score. ;)
lol. That would be fun. Let's hope next year stay in person, as these couple of years of online competition really tired everyone out.
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Re: 2022 National Tournament: California Institute of Technology

Post by legendaryalchemist »

Unome wrote: May 27th, 2022, 4:22 pm
legendaryalchemist wrote: May 27th, 2022, 3:03 pmRemote Sensing (7th):

Another 7th place, although this one is less disappointing because I wasn't expecting to medal. I'm not sure why all of the questions asked for multiple-sentence responses when there wasn't really enough time for that - the test length may have been slightly longer than ideal. There was far too much image analysis and not enough conceptual questions, but the questions themselves were reasonable. I also think the point values on multiple-choice planetary energy balance questions were too high, but this worked in my favor with my astronomy background. I wish I had been able to study this event more deeply than I did, as it seems really interesting, but the tests also vary a lot from tournament to tournament. Congrats to the same Mason team that won Astronomy.

6/10
I was not involved with this test, but for my own reference - what sort of point values were you seeing that you thought were too high for the planetary energy balance?
There were 8-10 point questions for multiple-choice questions like "select the two values that must be equivalent assuming x about albedo/emissivity/etc." I think those questions would have made more sense in a free-response format because for the teams that didn't know this (which is likely more than half of the teams), random guessing could make a big difference.
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Unome (June 2nd, 2022, 6:51 am)
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