Scioly.org

AAAAANNNNDDDD WE'RE CLOSED OUT! 45th team signed up this afternoon. There is, however, a wait list for those who still want to come in case other teams withdraw: http://yuso.yale.edu/yale-invitational- ... n-waitlist

Thank you everyone for all the enthusiasm, concerns, and emails!!!! We got a solid sampling of teams from 4 states (CT, NY, PA, MA) with varied experience levels, so there's a little bit of something for everyone at the comp.

Looking forward to seeing everyone on campus! As usual, clarifications and questions are always welcome from the community, whether registered or not, on this thread.

I'll be there on Saturday running Compound Machines! Bringing a small contingent from MIT -- say hi if you see me/us. I'll probably be wearing an MIT sweatshirt. See you all soon.

Does anyone have the results for the invitational?

Top 10 Schools (not teams)
1. Ward Melville - 79 pts
2. Bayard Rustin - 152 pts (won tie breaker)
3. Conestoga - 152 pts (lost tie breaker)
4. Chattahoochee - 223 pts
5. Hopkins - 231 pts
6. Spackenkill - 245 pts
7. South Windsor - 265 pts
8. Newton North - 335 pts
9. Townsend Harris - 337 pts
10. EO Smith - 363 pts

Dang that invitational was pretty competitive. I got 3rd in TPS. I was pretty surprised, since my partner and I got that event the night before. For my notes sheet I just reused a lot of notes from my thermo binder I made the previous year. I was really surprised that Spackenkill got 6th, since we only medaled in 3 events. However, all of our events that we didn't medal in were top 10, which really sucks because they were so close to medaling.

Crazy Puny Man wrote:Does anyone have the results for the invitational?

Full results are online!

http://yuso.yale.edu/2014-results

spackenkillkid wrote:Dang that invitational was pretty competitive. I got 3rd in TPS. I was pretty surprised, since my partner and I got that event the night before. For my notes sheet I just reused a lot of notes from my thermo binder I made the previous year. I was really surprised that Spackenkill got 6th, since we only medaled in 3 events. However, all of our events that we didn't medal in were top 10, which really sucks because they were so close to medaling.

That TPS test was pretty difficult imo tbh. The guy who wrote it (one of my close friends at Yale) probably overestimated the science knowledge of high school students taking the test…I think that was a pretty systematic problem with the events written, and we're still debating whether that's a good or bad thing. We college students sometimes forget how much we actually knew when we were in high school :p

I like hard tests in general, because it's easier to separate the teams that actually know what they're doing, so I don't think it's necessarily a bad thing. I know my favorite Astronomy tests were always the difficult ones.

The range of scores on the Compound Machines exam that I wrote for YUSO was 1 to 44 out of 50, which I thought was pretty crazy. Can't tell whether that means it was too difficult, too easy, just right, or none of the above. The 1 and 44 weren't striking outliers either -- I had plenty of teams in the single digits and plenty of teams in the 30s.

Luo wrote:The range of scores on the Compound Machines exam that I wrote for YUSO was 1 to 44 out of 50, which I thought was pretty crazy. Can't tell whether that means it was too difficult, too easy, just right, or none of the above. The 1 and 44 weren't striking outliers either -- I had plenty of teams in the single digits and plenty of teams in the 30s.

Not crazy at all. In fact it sounds like you made a good test that had a nice spread of scores to help eliminate too many ties. Would see to me "just right" since you didn't have everyone at the bottom or the top. You will always have some low scores from those people that get thrown at the last minute into events they had not prepared for.