Cornell Invitational (Division B and C)

[megrimlockawesom]

did they do science quiz bowl again?

I don't know if any of you were there last year but me and my partner literally guessed all the questions during the test part and somehow made it to finals. And when we made it to finals we did not answer any question and we somehow got 3rd.

[Name]

did they do science quiz bowl again?

I don't know if any of you were there last year but me and my partner literally guessed all the questions during the test part and somehow made it to finals. And when we made it to finals we did not answer any question and we somehow got 3rd.

They ran science quiz bowl, but didn't run finals.

[jslocum]

Will competing teams be getting a copy of the answer keys? I haven't seen any info on this yet.

[coopsadoodles]

I'm not sure, but i think the coaches have all of our tests. At least for my school, our coach somehow gets a digital copy of all the tests and answer keys but idk how lol.

[Rivkaaa]

I'm not sure, but i think the coaches have all of our tests. At least for my school, our coach somehow gets a digital copy of all the tests and answer keys but idk how lol.

Yeah, we only got our physical tests, but no answer keys yet.

[ScottMaurer19]

Having seen how hard it is to pull off an invitational I don't tend to criticize, but there were several things at Cornell that were quite egregious to me. The main issue was Mission Possible on our second team was marked as a no show even though the coaches and I both watched them run their device and return the score sheet. Mission had other oversights as well with score sheets being left on tables and having to be handed in by kind teams they did not belong to, not closely following the rules or not telling students they weren't following the rules consistently and allowing things that were pretty clearly not allowed in the rules to pass inspection, allowing teams to use phones and not wear goggles while competing, etc.
We also believe there was an issue with how sounds was scored for our two teams seeing as we had devices that performed well and what appeared to be strong test scores. It looks like the device scores were not added to test scores...
XPD or "ExDes" as they called it was also running late as previously stated, but the scoring was another issue. Normally graders leave comments or marks of some sort to indicate why teams lost points on the rubric, but both teams lacked anything that would help them understand their scores which were much lower than they expected.

I could be wrong about Sounds and the XPD scoring could just be an Ohio norm that we are used to but again there was a bit too much that seemed off with our results for me to be convinced. The Mission Possible error is not an easily forgivable one as it is extremely disappointing to see your teammates, who have worked hard on their device, not receive credit for it and bring the team down even if it was not their fault.

[C8H10N4O2!]

Having seen how hard it is to pull off an invitational I don't tend to criticize, but there were several things at Cornell that were quite egregious to me. The main issue was Mission Possible on our second team was marked as a no show even though the coaches and I both watched them run their device and return the score sheet. Mission had other oversights as well with score sheets being left on tables and having to be handed in by kind teams they did not belong to, not closely following the rules or not telling students they weren't following the rules consistently and allowing things that were pretty clearly not allowed in the rules to pass inspection, allowing teams to use phones and not wear goggles ......

I competed in mission and agree that there were several problems. For one, they told us to use the outside most table for set up and running. While I didnt have a problem with this, there was another person with a notebook just watching all of them. We had come up with a really unique solution for the final task (have been told so several times now), and am pretty sure that it is shared with other teams through pictures and notes (wasnt too hard to figure out what we did). Also, as teams moved in and out of the testing area, the constantly bumped our table, which caused us to not be able to set up everything. I will say that the ESs were reasonably accommodating. There were only 3 of them, but they allowed us to set up our trigger happy parts right before we tested, even though it was clearly outside our 30 min set up period (mind you we did only need about 10 minutes of that, then had to wait about 30 min after that to actually run our device). For nationals, I think the same location would be okay (end of the year anyway), with my only recommendation of having several entrance points so that no team has to continuously stop set up so other teams can move around.

[vanilladean]

hello friends;
cornell was pretty lit but i would really like a feedback survey for some of it.
expd: this event started late but i kinda understand why. this event slot ended at the same time the next started, so i ran to baker in the snow and that kinda sucked. all in all, not something the committee can necessarily control. however, maybe the times between events didn’t really provide for the actual time taken to travel. also they gave my team 5th but wrote 2nd on their test :\\\\
scitech bowl: i liked this, 10/10. my teammates and i had a great time.
parasitology: i medaled in this, 10/10. i actually studied so hard and i kinda had a mental breakdown but i really enjoyed this event. thanks for the 3rd place!!!!
herpetology: didn’t follow the rules super closely but i think it was a pretty great, creative test otherwise
protein: i know not rly under their control but the computers were kinda tragic and they changed the residues midway through our timeslot. 6/10
wright stuff: alright.... next time please listen to coaches when they voice concerns about the venue. if possible, please check in/do flights simultaneously (like check in outside the flight room) so that they don’t have a giant holdup like what is what happened. 3/10 (can’t believe they got a branch from outside to get that plane down from the ceiling)
awards: i really appreciated that they shouted out nevada even though they said nevada not nevada. i had a great time chatting w/ camas and screaming for everyone HAHA.

clark hs had a great time thanks cornell + all the buds we met!!!!

The room was fine though, only issue was the chairs, but it essentially made it the same height as the SOUP ceiling. I was unhappy about room conditions, but given the fact that it was more realistic to fly in a smaller room in order to keep times lower, therefore allowing for shorter flight periods, making it more realistic to keep the competition on time. The hold up was not the fault of the ESs rather the tournament for holding more 8 or more teams per time slot, with many teams taking close to the full 11 minutes allotted for pre-flight and flight periods. Also, there were some teams, such as yours who were refusing to go until a certain time or team had gone, in your case, you wanted to go last. And the branch is something teams will have to do if they don't have/bring a stick.

Other news, Northville should've been DQed for violating rule 4b, and getting a stick from outside the testing room, during their 8 minutes, and getting down the only plane they checked in. I wouldn't be bothered by this, except for the fact they got first and taking a loss at an invitational and knowing next time to bring all potential tools and parts, would be more beneficial than letting them violate it and then have them do it again at a more important competition such as regionals, states, or nationals.

As the person that competed for CHS in Wright Stuff at Cornell, I would like to clarify a few things. First, we understand that that using the full eleven minutes can add up to delays, causing a backlog of competitors. However, it can be observed that if you run check-ins simultaneously with flights you can speed up the process. Using MIT as an example, they were probably able to check-in 2-3 teams in an eleven minute period while other flights were going on, effectively allowing flights to run back to back and seamlessly. With Cornell, it was impossible to run flights at such a pace because of their check-in to flight to check-in to flight format. This made the check-in to flight process around 15 minutes minimum for each team and slowed the whole process down by a large margin. This was just odd to me because other events like Mousetrap Vehicle were able to do check-ins with runs simultaneously.

Secondly, as a school who does not take the value of invitationals and time for granted, it hurts us to see your statement. We were expecting to actually be able to compete in the early parts of the last time slot (which was the one we signed up for) and very eager to complete our last event of the day. Because of this, we were very vigilant in maintaining contact with the event supervisors and successful in completing our flights promptly. It is my understanding that the way the event was run could have allowed teams to delay their flights and being in full realization of this, we did not abuse those conditions at all.

[Rossyspsce]

hello friends;
cornell was pretty lit but i would really like a feedback survey for some of it.
expd: this event started late but i kinda understand why. this event slot ended at the same time the next started, so i ran to baker in the snow and that kinda sucked. all in all, not something the committee can necessarily control. however, maybe the times between events didn’t really provide for the actual time taken to travel. also they gave my team 5th but wrote 2nd on their test :\\\\
scitech bowl: i liked this, 10/10. my teammates and i had a great time.
parasitology: i medaled in this, 10/10. i actually studied so hard and i kinda had a mental breakdown but i really enjoyed this event. thanks for the 3rd place!!!!
herpetology: didn’t follow the rules super closely but i think it was a pretty great, creative test otherwise
protein: i know not rly under their control but the computers were kinda tragic and they changed the residues midway through our timeslot. 6/10
wright stuff: alright.... next time please listen to coaches when they voice concerns about the venue. if possible, please check in/do flights simultaneously (like check in outside the flight room) so that they don’t have a giant holdup like what is what happened. 3/10 (can’t believe they got a branch from outside to get that plane down from the ceiling)
awards: i really appreciated that they shouted out nevada even though they said nevada not nevada. i had a great time chatting w/ camas and screaming for everyone HAHA.

clark hs had a great time thanks cornell + all the buds we met!!!!

The room was fine though, only issue was the chairs, but it essentially made it the same height as the SOUP ceiling. I was unhappy about room conditions, but given the fact that it was more realistic to fly in a smaller room in order to keep times lower, therefore allowing for shorter flight periods, making it more realistic to keep the competition on time. The hold up was not the fault of the ESs rather the tournament for holding more 8 or more teams per time slot, with many teams taking close to the full 11 minutes allotted for pre-flight and flight periods. Also, there were some teams, such as yours who were refusing to go until a certain time or team had gone, in your case, you wanted to go last. And the branch is something teams will have to do if they don't have/bring a stick.

Other news, Northville should've been DQed for violating rule 4b, and getting a stick from outside the testing room, during their 8 minutes, and getting down the only plane they checked in. I wouldn't be bothered by this, except for the fact they got first and taking a loss at an invitational and knowing next time to bring all potential tools and parts, would be more beneficial than letting them violate it and then have them do it again at a more important competition such as regionals, states, or nationals.

I mean I competed and saw that happen but it's fine imo, since it is in fact an invitational, and we're here to learn anyway.

[megrimlockawesom]

did they do science quiz bowl again?

I don't know if any of you were there last year but me and my partner literally guessed all the questions during the test part and somehow made it to finals. And when we made it to finals we did not answer any question and we somehow got 3rd.

They ran science quiz bowl, but didn't run finals.

Aw man that sucks. Finals were actually pretty fun. I guess they didn't want the same method we used to be exploited.