MIT Invitational 2018

[EastStroudsburg13]

Definitely agree here. I doubt we'll see even moderately common public releases in any area of the nation for 15+ years, if/when invitationals and tests become so common that they're no longer as valued.

This is a somewhat pessimistic view from my perspective. I think that if there is a concerted effort to start making test resources more publicly available, I'd say seeing most of the major invitationals releasing tests is a good goal for 10 years from now. It'll likely take a great deal of cooperation, but we're at the point where a large number of cross-state invitationals are run by alumni, and these groups tend to be rather inter-connected. I also think it's important to keep separating the value of invitationals vs. the value of tests, because while they are both important resources, the true value of each is rather different.

I dunno, perhaps I'm overly optimistic. But I've seen the beginning of support for publicly releasing tests among alumni here, and with the rate things are changing from year to year (who would have expected an alumni-led Cornell nationals 10 years ago?), I think it's doable.

[Unome]

Definitely agree here. I doubt we'll see even moderately common public releases in any area of the nation for 15+ years, if/when invitationals and tests become so common that they're no longer as valued.

This is a somewhat pessimistic view from my perspective. I think that if there is a concerted effort to start making test resources more publicly available, I'd say seeing most of the major invitationals releasing tests is a good goal for 10 years from now. It'll likely take a great deal of cooperation, but we're at the point where a large number of cross-state invitationals are run by alumni, and these groups tend to be rather inter-connected. I also think it's important to keep separating the value of invitationals vs. the value of tests, because while they are both important resources, the true value of each is rather different.

I dunno, perhaps I'm overly optimistic. But I've seen the beginning of support for publicly releasing tests among alumni here, and with the rate things are changing from year to year (who would have expected an alumni-led Cornell nationals 10 years ago?), I think it's doable.

I agree with that. I was talking about, say, half the invitationals in Ohio doing it or something.

[EastStroudsburg13]

Definitely agree here. I doubt we'll see even moderately common public releases in any area of the nation for 15+ years, if/when invitationals and tests become so common that they're no longer as valued.

This is a somewhat pessimistic view from my perspective. I think that if there is a concerted effort to start making test resources more publicly available, I'd say seeing most of the major invitationals releasing tests is a good goal for 10 years from now. It'll likely take a great deal of cooperation, but we're at the point where a large number of cross-state invitationals are run by alumni, and these groups tend to be rather inter-connected. I also think it's important to keep separating the value of invitationals vs. the value of tests, because while they are both important resources, the true value of each is rather different.

I dunno, perhaps I'm overly optimistic. But I've seen the beginning of support for publicly releasing tests among alumni here, and with the rate things are changing from year to year (who would have expected an alumni-led Cornell nationals 10 years ago?), I think it's doable.

I agree with that. I was talking about, say, half the invitationals in Ohio doing it or something.

Ah, in that case I would agree with you. It's also probably hard to expect a majority of invitationals to publish tests when many invitationals still do not publish final scores; asking for a full upload of a test set would be a tall ask in that case, and not just because of test protectiveness!

[varunscs11]

If I were not too tired to do anything after the tournament

This is a key point - running a tournament is tiring at all levels, more so for the planning committee and directors. They pull so many all nighters the week of MIT it's crazy and without the planning committee, events like Rocks, Forensics, Chem Lab, Mat Sci, WIDI, etc would never be set up in time and the material acquisition would be so much more painful. Furthermore, they have to clean everything up after the competition. So it's understandable why releasing exams within 24 hours is not a priority / reality. After all that time and work they put in to make an invitational that is better run and has better exams that Nationals, I think it's perfectly okay for them to take a break, they are people too.

Also it's MIT's prerogative to release exams however they want. But let's be honest, would we really be having this conversation if the tournament was poorly run? Probably not because the discussion would be dominated by how bad event X was or how proctor Y didn't follow the rules or how the awards ceremony was late by Z hours.

[Unome]

If I were not too tired to do anything after the tournament

This is a key point - running a tournament is tiring at all levels, more so for the planning committee and directors. They pull so many all nighters the week of MIT it's crazy and without the planning committee, events like Rocks, Forensics, Chem Lab, Mat Sci, WIDI, etc would never be set up in time and the material acquisition would be so much more painful.

Ok, I guess I have never pulled an all-nighter at all, so I'm not really that tired (in fact I don't think I've ever stayed up past 11 or so for scioly purposes). I probably should just release tests the same day...

[ClarkSluelway]

Does anyone have the password yet for the tests?

[lumosityfan]

Does anyone have the password yet for the tests?

They're not going to be published online so no one's going to tell you here even if they do. I suggest you PM someone.

[pikachu4919]

Does anyone have the password yet for the tests?

The portal to the tests is up on the website. I imagine you should have a password by now? Even though I was one of the event supervisors, I'm in no way involved in the distribution of the tests back to the teams that attended and do not have a password.

(Also, does anyone else have spicy event ratings for any of us supervisors? We'd love to hear them! There haven't been too many so far..... )

[chopchpp]

Does anyone have the password yet for the tests?

The portal to the tests is up on the website. I imagine you should have a password by now? Even though I was one of the event supervisors, I'm in no way involved in the distribution of the tests back to the teams that attended and do not have a password.

(Also, does anyone else have spicy event ratings for any of us supervisors? We'd love to hear them! There haven't been too many so far..... )

The chemlab test was super long and super interesting, also liked the avatar theme 10/10
The thermo test, especially the last few frq's, felt nearly impossible but was also super great 9/10

[Riptide]

(Also, does anyone else have spicy event ratings for any of us supervisors? We'd love to hear them! There haven't been too many so far..... )

I just want to note that this is practically my first year in scioly and my first time ever competing at this caliber of level, so I don't really have anything to compare this to, but here are my event ratings:

Fermi Questions (14) : The test was really good and had a nice mixture of easy and hard questions. In my opinion it improved a ton from last years test (both were written by jkang I believe). Only suggestion I have is maybe adding a few more questions to add more of a rush to the test and help differentiate teams better (3rd - 10th place had a difference of only 14 points). Loved the last question

Game On (52): By now I'm sure everyone heard about how the event was run, so I won't spend much time talking about it. I think the proctors and graders did the best they could in their situation, but I wish MIT had put more time into preparing for this event. Most (if not all) the graders had no experience with the event and so the grading was pretty random. On top of that, the computers were extremely slow and ended up being frozen for minutes at a time. While I am upset with how it all went down, I'm sure the event will be better prepared next year (assuming Game On remains an event).

Helicopters (14): Nothing much to say here. The room was very open and the ceilings were pretty good. Everything seemed fine to me and I'm pretty blown away by the top scores (around 3:00 raw time with a chinook )

Hovercraft (9): The test was pretty challenging for me, but it was lots of fun to take. The length was around what we expected, and my partner and I barely didn't finish (we were almost done with the last question). Definitely required most of the teams to have the 2 partners to split it up and take it separately in order to finish, and the test itself had a good variety of questions. While I personally didn't do the vehicle testing, everything seemed to go ok there. The impound process was pretty slow, and it almost came to the point where I was going to have to impound the A team's hovercraft since both of them had events first slot. Luckily it didn't come to that, but it would be nice to have a few more stations for impound. If getting volunteers is a problem, simply starting the impound process earlier could easily fix the problem.

All in all, MIT was a great experience and I can't wait to come back next year!