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gryphaea1635 wrote:

Unome wrote:

gryphaea1635 wrote:
ok, thanks.
Also, seeing another MA person here is really uncommon

Are any of you from Acton-Boxborough? You took two places off us in Fossils

haha no, I'm from Boston Latin School and I got 10th at MIT... :p

I'm from AB, and 10th isn't bad considering we just completely bombed Yale (overconfidence kills, guys)

DoReMiFossil wrote:

gryphaea1635 wrote:

Unome wrote: Are any of you from Acton-Boxborough? You took two places off us in Fossils

haha no, I'm from Boston Latin School and I got 10th at MIT... :p

I'm from AB, and 10th isn't bad considering we just completely bombed Yale (overconfidence kills, guys)

Are you from the AB that took 1st at MIT in fossils? I'm sorry about bombing Yale (Was it really that hard in comparison to MIT? Cause last years Yale test was not good. Too ez)

I think this time it was about the same as the MIT test. I remember one question was like "Which other coral is the most related to this coral?" We identified that coral as septastraea and the choices were favorites, halysites, and heliophyllum. We chose heliophyllum because favosites and halysites are in the same order so they can't both be the most related, but I actually didn't really know that one. Looking back, we probably misidentified the "septastraea" and it was probably hexagonaria. Then it would've made more sense.

Another question was about bothriolepis and it was "which of these was not true about the class Bothriolepis belongs to?" 2 of the choices were
a. Most species were herbivorous
b. Many species had true teeth

I remembered Dunkleosteus and thought that it was b, since Dunkle. didn't have true teeth. But according to wikipedia, placoderms did develop teeth so I probably got that question wrong. Im pretty sure the correct answer is choice a.

Also, it had quite a few questions where we had to put specimens in chronological order. That means a lot of flipping in our binder (for me at least).
It also had teeth. The bane of the MIT test

Overall, the test was pretty good though, the "content" wasn't more in-depth, but it was more "tricky."

I hate it when they ask you to place the specimens in order. Its such a pain esp when there are like 10. Pretty sure placoderms were either detritovores or carnivores not herbivores. Although technically placoderms dont have teeth because the "teeth" are just extensions of the jaw. Prob hexagonaria cause septastrea is scleractinia.

varunscs11 wrote: Are you from the AB that took 1st at MIT in fossils? I'm sorry about bombing Yale (Was it really that hard in comparison to MIT? Cause last years Yale test was not good. Too ez)

lolol yeah. And like grypaea1635 said, it wasn't a particularly hard test (good job btw, see you at states ). We thought that we could use Yale to experiment test-taking strategies...don't do that during an actual competition, that was really dumb. Basically I flipped through the binder and my partner wrote things down this time around, except I'm really slow, and my partner was not good at spelling. We were all around very short on time and rushed through all the questions. We also didn't expect to get full points taken off for spelling (or more like I told my partner that spelling wasn't important), so we ended up getting about half our IDs marked wrong for spelling....I think that was the reason. Either that or we're actually really bad.

Has anyone ever had a test where in a station they would make you speed ID and categorize random invertebrates into phylums (or was it classes?) and make you count how many of them there were in each?

humanbeingofearth548 wrote:Has anyone ever had a test where in a station they would make you speed ID and categorize random invertebrates into phylums (or was it classes?) and make you count how many of them there were in each?

That seems like an extremely strange test (unless it was classes).

UTF-8 U+6211 U+662F wrote:

humanbeingofearth548 wrote:Has anyone ever had a test where in a station they would make you speed ID and categorize random invertebrates into phylums (or was it classes?) and make you count how many of them there were in each?

That seems like an extremely strange test (unless it was classes).

Hmm..it was probably class then. I don't remember it very well Perhaps there are any fossil peeps here who went to Muscatel invite last year that remembered it? (It was a fun test wasn't it?)

DoReMiFossil wrote:

varunscs11 wrote: Are you from the AB that took 1st at MIT in fossils? I'm sorry about bombing Yale (Was it really that hard in comparison to MIT? Cause last years Yale test was not good. Too ez)

lolol yeah. And like grypaea1635 said, it wasn't a particularly hard test (good job btw, see you at states ). We thought that we could use Yale to experiment test-taking strategies...don't do that during an actual competition, that was really dumb. Basically I flipped through the binder and my partner wrote things down this time around, except I'm really slow, and my partner was not good at spelling. We were all around very short on time and rushed through all the questions. We also didn't expect to get full points taken off for spelling (or more like I told my partner that spelling wasn't important), so we ended up getting about half our IDs marked wrong for spelling....I think that was the reason. Either that or we're actually really bad.

lol so true! I love it when they count of for spelling because i never miss spelling but I know a lot of people do so it's rewarding! Yeah I think next year I'll just let my partner do the whole test and just correct her mistakes (lol be a lazy senior). This year is gonna be rough for me (if we make Nats) cause the Nats test is definitely not solo-able. (But on the bright side my new partner was able to learn all the ID without missing too many in 1-2 wks which is amazing. So who knows she might be able to memorize the information very quickly as well)

humanbeingofearth548 wrote:Has anyone ever had a test where in a station they would make you speed ID and categorize random invertebrates into phylums (or was it classes?) and make you count how many of them there were in each?

I had that last year in... the Muscatel invite, I think?