Captains' Summer Exchange

This article is about the Captains' Summer Exchange. For Captains Tryouts, see Captains Tryouts.

The Captains' Summer Exchange (CSE) is a test exchange founded by Adi1008, birdylayaduck08, and SOnerd during the summer before the 2017-2018 competition season. Captains from schools submit two tests for different events during the summer (usually starting in mid-June) that undergo an approval/revision process, similar to those of SSSS and Captains Tryouts. In exchange for writing and revising the two tests, the school receives access to the folder of all approved tests. After 4 months in December, tests from CSE are shared publicly.

CSE is announced through the SciOly Captains Facebook group for the coming competition season by a captain from one of the schools who runs it and requires the use of a team email (e.g. [email protected]) to participate, preventing team members who are not captains from participating. Schools sign up to write tests on a spreadsheet on a first-come-first-serve basis. CSE does not include any events that do not involve a test, such as Electric Vehicle, Boomilever, and Mission Possible or events that are largely "prompt-based", such as Experimental Design, Game On, and Write It Do It. CSE is run separately on events in Division C and Division B.

The first iteration of CSE was run by captains from Seven Lakes High School and Blue Valley North High School and had 66 tests submitted from 33 schools across 15 states. Since then, CSE has grown rapidly, now being run by captains from Seven Lakes High School, Mason High School, Acton-Boxborough Regional High School, and New Trier High School and involves over 80 schools and 160 tests.

Purpose

Although similar to SSSS and Captains Tryouts in theory, this exchange is not meant to replace either of them. Although SSSS takes place during the summer, anyone can submit tests or notes, making its tests unsuitable for tryouts. Likewise, while Captains Tryouts restricts participation to only verified captains, it takes place too late for many teams' early tryouts. CSE aims to fill a niche for an exchange that can provide tryout-grade tests during the summer for captains to use. However, to prevent double-dipping (submitting the same test to multiple places), directors of CSE, SSS, and Captains Tryouts have access to submitted tests across all three.