Science Olympiad at MIT Invitational 2019

[Alex-RCHS]

does anyone know about the winning build scores?

Rough estimates for mission were posted here: viewtopic.php?f=291&p=373794#p373794

[antoine_ego]

Water quality was removed from results. Can someone explain?

[TheSquaad]

Avogadro just updated and shows all the water quality scores removed. AB is now listed as winning 1st and 2nd.

[Raleway]

Gonna be a spicy hot take here;

This being my last year competing (therefore my last MIT invitational) and having competed at many of the other top competitions such as Princeton and SOUP, I strongly disliked MIT. I competed here last year and also disliked it, but this year I felt was much worse. I competed in the last block of Sounds of Music - and I waited 50 minutes in line to have to do my 5 minute build portion. Having to stand in the hallway with your instrument and people walking by with everything going on is terrible. Luckily, my other build portions went early on in the day and were able to finish right on time - big props to the Wright Stuff event supervisors that I know are great at what they do based on personal experience. Despite this, I definitely feel the flying arena was poor and strongly conducive to inherent disadvantages, but nothing on the event supervisors since the picking of the arena is fully on the MIT organizers.

It's not just that, but knowing that my Fermi exam was scored incorrectly as well as my Codebusters exam (after only glancing through it for about 30 minutes on our long bus ride home) really irks me. One was in my favor, but I strongly dislike any error in grading, albeit understanding the time crunch. My team also mentioned how in Thermodynamics two teams were even handed out the answer key... and those two teams mentioned it only 5 minutes after they got it. Completely unacceptable in more ways than one. Not just that, each team in that first period for that event was at a disadvantage for only having 30 minutes rather than 50 minutes because of issues.

It is simply my opinion that an invitational that is run smoothly and simply is the best. All these small irking issues pile up and really create an uncomfortable invitational. In attending PUSO and SOUP, I felt each one was better run than MIT - especially PUSO. It's simple, is exactly what it says it is, and we actually got a homeroom that was a "room" with a men's bathroom on the same floor. SOUP has a slightly confusing format to its campus but not as bad as MIT. Despite this, they had volunteers in the cold directing people and answering questions to keep competitors in the right place.

I appreciate that MIT tried to expand its team list and number, but inevitably, there comes a point that it is infeasible. Here, that's what happened. I hope each following invitational can read the feedback and apply it so the same mistakes do not happen again. Many teams travel long distances and put up with pretty bad complications to compete, and it's just very disheartening to see mistakes that are avoidable. Congratulations to our Mason 2.0 from MIT this year and everyone who competed!

*My opinion simply represents my own opinion given my experience and thoughts*

[sciolyperson1]

Superscored:
*MAY HAVE A FEW ERRORS*
Acton: 141
Boca: 221
Columbia: 256
Enloe: 270
WWP North: 276
LASA: 281
Clark: 300
Clements: 302
Meville: 348
Harriton: 393
Rustin: 393, less 2nd places than Harriton
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/ ... sp=sharing

After re-superscoring, LASA moved from 6th to 4th, and Enloe went from 4th to 6th. North still stays at 5th (but now with a 1 point difference between them and 4th).
Other than that, no major changes.

[antoine_ego]

Water Quality is back, Acton-Boxborough 1st and 3rd again.

[EastStroudsburg13]

Gonna be a spicy hot take here;

This being my last year competing (therefore my last MIT invitational) and having competed at many of the other top competitions such as Princeton and SOUP, I strongly disliked MIT. I competed here last year and also disliked it, but this year I felt was much worse. I competed in the last block of Sounds of Music - and I waited 50 minutes in line to have to do my 5 minute build portion. Having to stand in the hallway with your instrument and people walking by with everything going on is terrible. Luckily, my other build portions went early on in the day and were able to finish right on time - big props to the Wright Stuff event supervisors that I know are great at what they do based on personal experience. Despite this, I definitely feel the flying arena was poor and strongly conducive to inherent disadvantages, but nothing on the event supervisors since the picking of the arena is fully on the MIT organizers.

It's not just that, but knowing that my Fermi exam was scored incorrectly as well as my Codebusters exam (after only glancing through it for about 30 minutes on our long bus ride home) really irks me. One was in my favor, but I strongly dislike any error in grading, albeit understanding the time crunch. My team also mentioned how in Thermodynamics two teams were even handed out the answer key... and those two teams mentioned it only 5 minutes after they got it. Completely unacceptable in more ways than one. Not just that, each team in that first period for that event was at a disadvantage for only having 30 minutes rather than 50 minutes because of issues.

It is simply my opinion that an invitational that is run smoothly and simply is the best. All these small irking issues pile up and really create an uncomfortable invitational. In attending PUSO and SOUP, I felt each one was better run than MIT - especially PUSO. It's simple, is exactly what it says it is, and we actually got a homeroom that was a "room" with a men's bathroom on the same floor. SOUP has a slightly confusing format to its campus but not as bad as MIT. Despite this, they had volunteers in the cold directing people and answering questions to keep competitors in the right place.

I appreciate that MIT tried to expand its team list and number, but inevitably, there comes a point that it is infeasible. Here, that's what happened. I hope each following invitational can read the feedback and apply it so the same mistakes do not happen again. Many teams travel long distances and put up with pretty bad complications to compete, and it's just very disheartening to see mistakes that are avoidable. Congratulations to our Mason 2.0 from MIT this year and everyone who competed!

*My opinion simply represents my own opinion given my experience and thoughts*

I think these concerns are valid; while increasing the number of teams gives more students the opportunity to compete, it becomes much more difficult for the tournament to be run as well logistically. There are good reasons nationals has been reluctant to expand beyond 60.

My position is that I think MIT should look to partner in some way with Harvard if they would like to really expand their invitational to unprecedented levels, but also maintain a high standard of running events. You could have two simultaneous tournaments, one for nationals-level teams and one where schools that have qualified for nationals in the last x number of years (or alternatively, who have placed in the top x of nationals) are ineligible. You'd theoretically be able to serve 100+ teams at once, and you'd also be running the largest tournaments that are sorted by experience and success. It'd be a very interesting add to the SO calendar and would definitely push the boundaries of what SO can look like, which is what MIT seems to have tried to do.

[lumosityfan]

I agree with East; I think the problem with MIT recently is that it seems that they've become too big for their own good. They want to make everything look flashy with keynote speakers and expanded schedules when they don't always focus on making sure that every event is run well. Yes I agree that that's not always possible. But I think MIT, amongst other tournaments as well, should focus on the fundamentals: good scheduling of events, making sure enough resources are there for the events, making sure the events themselves are run well. I think the partnership would do wonders because then it gives them an even greater pool of resources from which to draw upon. Also it takes less pressure away from MIT from having to be "the" tournament when it can just be a great tournament for teams to practice for the year and for SciOly to become more accessible to teams from around the country but especially to Massachusetts teams.

[Name]

I don't have my tests back, but here's my opinions of MIT based on originally taking the tests.

Astro was well ran, and very difficult. Unfortunetely since I took the DSO questions, I cant really speak for the math questions (which are probably my favorite), but this was a very well written test. We didn't even get close to finishing, and just from glancing at the last page, those questions looked ridiculous. 10/10 well done

For code, the procter let us use scientific calculators if we didn't use the other functions. This actually benefitted us as we forgot 4-5 function calculators and another team notified us we were allowed them when asking to borrow 4-5 function ones. However, this is MIT and I would expect them to strictly abide by the rules. The test itself was pretty good, testing almost every cipher except running key, aristo with error, and only tested on hill encryption. I feel like they definitely could've tested at least the aristo with error and hill key, but the rest of the test was wonderful. The timed cipher was super easy (1:47 solve iirc) which idk is a good or bad thing. The test was hard, but not extremely difficult 7/10

Fermi the test was much more difficult then last year, which I liked for the most part. Some things though were imo a bit too obscure, where it was more guessing, and luck then estimating (such as one question included the price of etherium as part of the question, we didn't know what etherium was). But I love a challenging fermi test, and that was probably one of the hardest fermi tests i've taken, and I didn't finish until only a few minuites left. Maybe a couple questions regarding physics equations, or harder math problems then raising something to the 7th could've been included. Honestly im just happy I did well and didn't get sub-30 like last year's MIT compitition again. 9/10

I got to explore a bit in between events, and while it was cool to be exploring MIT, the campus as a whole is kinda bland.

Congrats to ABRHS for winning 1st while unstacked, and to Boca for really shocking me at how well they did!

[randomperson123]

Anyone know about scores for boomilever?