West coast invites

[nicholasmaurer]

That's a fair point. The list is very hypothetical for the future given that my school is in the NE.
However what we are looking for is west coast invites that have 1. competitive teams (at least some teams that go to nationals) 2. at least UPenn/Cornell quality tests. I know Golden Gate is one of the top West coast invites? I'm not really sure though because I've been to only East coast invites and I know Wright State is one of the main Midwest ones. But definitely nothing before December is going to work because of when we do testing and stuff (a lot of the Southern ones are earlier in the year so they're not really an option).

Tournaments that I would say have the quality that you're looking for, roughly in descending order:

• MIT
• Golden Gate
• Princeton
• UT-Austin
• Solon
• UPenn
• Harvard
• Cornell
• Centerville

(sorry in advance if I forgot someone)

On the subject of quality, I can say Solon HS is drifting away from having participating schools writing our exams. I don't expect to completely make the transition this year, but we are definitely attempting to move towards having tests written by experienced alumni and state/national ES.

This doesn't help you though since our date conflicts with your regional tournament

[Alex-RCHS]

Troy, Mira Loma, Westlake, and Boyceville are also good options that haven't been mentioned yet. They may not be UPenn quality, but they are more likely to have slots open this late.

[sciolycoach]

Hello,

I'll chime in here with Boyceville mentioned. Our date is 12/1, which I see probably isn't ideal. While we strive to provide a great competitive opportunity for both strong and new/young teams, and it is humbling to be mentioned alongside other great invites, I would be foolish to compare ourselves to many of the great invites. However, we will have a large tournament with several strong teams, including Mounds View (MN), Madison West, Medford, and Menomonie (WI), Ames (IA), and several other strong teams from the area, including most of the strongest teams from MN and WI. While we do have coaches run many of the events, we do have state and national event supervisors, including the Boomilever C national team of supervisors.

We are about one hour west of the Twin Cities of Minneapolis/St. Paul, a large airport and there are many hotel options in nearby Menomonie, host of the 2016 National Tournament.

We also pride ourselves on the entire experience and providing an exciting, memorable experience for all. We have a semi-professional photographer who takes pictures during the day and those are shared with all teams, and we provide all blank tests and keys to participating schools after the tournament as well as release tests back to teams. We also release all raw scores to all competing teams.

We do still have openings as well, and more information is available on our tournament website:

http://scienceolympiad.boycevillescience.com/invite

Feel free to let me know if you have any questions and by all means, all are invited and encouraged to attend!

Andy Hamm

[sophisSyo]

Thanks Andy. Honestly, anything past Illinois is a stretch for us. However I'm excited because we may go to Golden Gate next year and then we'll see how it goes from there! It honestly does depend on our performance this year as well.