anyone else find the test quality at states questionable

[Guber]

kinda reflecting back on this season and i just realized that states might have had the worst test quality of all my competitions this year

competed in NorCal states, and i think 2 events got thrown out due to the fact that the tests sucking so bad they couldnt be counted

i think for A+P they wrote it about the wrong topic and for forestry they reused an old test

other events i heard complaints about included EChem with reused questions and one of my events (DP) having part of the test being about the wrong topic (also the question difficulty was so low most of the decent teams finished sub 20min (TIME BASED TIEBRAKER TOO FOR SOME REASON!!?!??!!)

just kinda concerened, as this is my first year doing sci oly, and i kinda just assumed states was supposed to have good tests (given that our regional had amazing tests)

anyone else experience anything similar?

[pumptato-cat]

Absolutely.
I'm a builds main so I can't comment on study events, but Scrambler was horrifically run. ES was half an hour late, floor had a slope of 1-2 inches to the left, I was 20 minutes late to Codebusters because of the ES being late... They didn't tell me about a significant error in the test so I flunked Code.... Illegal trimming in Flight was allowed.
Lots of things went wrong, and I can recall bad tests from previous years, too. But most of my bad memories are with builds.
I will say that overall, States was good. The problems mentioned above didn't really affect performance(minus Codebusters)--most of the events I flunked were due to my own mistakes. However, for a State tournament, I would have expected it to be run better. But mine are mostly minor complaints--none describe conditions as bad as you've stated above.
I'm sorry your competition was run so awfully. :(

[Jehosaphat]

So I'm from Michigan so I can't comment too much on what's going on at your states, but I know here we work pretty hard to vet volunteers and get them the help they need to be successful. The biggest issue with Science Olympiad is that it is a very difficult thing to just jump into. Most volunteers have very little to no experience, so they may not understand that the rules change drastically from year to year, or that events should be ran a certain way that may not be spelled out in the rules. I was an event supervisor for the first time this year and I can say from experience that it is a TON of work to create quality material, despite all my previous knowledge from years of competing myself.

Lowering that barrier is one thing we are working on a lot in Michigan because there is a limited pool of experienced volunteers, and nobody likes it when an event is ran poorly. The best way to prevent these issues is to help out yourself once you've graduated, as you will know Scioly better than any random volunteer ever could hope to know.

[jaspattack]

kinda reflecting back on this season and i just realized that states might have had the worst test quality of all my competitions this year

competed in NorCal states, and i think 2 events got thrown out due to the fact that the tests sucking so bad they couldnt be counted

i think for A+P they wrote it about the wrong topic and for forestry they reused an old test

other events i heard complaints about included EChem with reused questions and one of my events (DP) having part of the test being about the wrong topic (also the question difficulty was so low most of the decent teams finished sub 20min (TIME BASED TIEBRAKER TOO FOR SOME REASON!!?!??!!)

just kinda concerened, as this is my first year doing sci oly, and i kinda just assumed states was supposed to have good tests (given that our regional had amazing tests)

anyone else experience anything similar?

I'm not from NorCal but I have several friends in and around California that attended the tournament. To my knowledge, at NorCal state events are often run by teams, which means that the people writing the tests are often parents or coaches that may not be as experienced with a specific event as a dedicated volunteer. This makes state test quality even more variable than normal. I'm not sure what regional you attend, but they're each run much differently than the state competition and might have a lot more experienced and dedicated volunteers working on exams (which would likely make the exams more consistently high quality).

State exam quality in general is particularly variable since many of the volunteers are not as experienced as authors for say, invitational tournaments. State organizations typically recruit individuals like teachers or parents to run events instead of seeking out people who have done Science Olympiad before (like many invitationals). Like Jehosaphat said, writing an exam or supervising an event is pretty difficult to do if you haven't done it before so if you're not looking for people with experience a lot of the time you'll get subpar results. This isn't to say that first time event supervisors can't do a great job, but I feel like most of these people just see ESing as something they have to do to contribute to the tournament instead of something they're genuinely excited about. They'll think it's easy, not put the necessary amount of effort into it, and then end up with an exam on the wrong topic or using outdated rules.

It's unfortunate, but it's also the reality in a lot of places. Running a Science Olympiad competition is hard work, but I would still expect better from state organizations (especially one as large as NorCal).

[randomdogonapc]

I am again, fashionably late to this post, but I can definitely say that Ohio States had HORRIBLE test quality. There was one question, I remember, that quoted two different ciphers on the codebusters test, and some of the others were just so confusingly worded that I thought the description was the cipher smh. The check-in box tester for flight was also about a centimeter short on the 63cm side, which I knew because they said my 60cm box was, “just barely under”, although the ES’s for other events weren’t bad according to my friends so maybe I’m just unlucky.


EDIT: Onshape, I await your next move…