Nationals Event Discussion

[Unome]

The classic thread, to talk about what you thought of how the events you competed in were run.

(Totally not just starting it off to see what people have to say about Geomaps...)

[Zeta]

I was slightly disappointed by the Division B A&P test. I was expecting more from it, like labeling, smears, histology, and more diseases / diagnosis questions.

[DA-416]

I agree with the sentiment about the Division B A&P test. It was insulting to every team's hard work especially when the test was just as easy as my regionals test. The only nationals topic was the clotting factors which was the most basic one you could do. The only disease was not even on the rules and more. In general, I'm just disappointed because I know me and my partner would have done much better than 26th if we had a more challenging test

[happy-the-puppy]

The anatomy test this year was incredibly easy, making it a very low-quality test.

The main factors about the test that I did not like are as follows:
Almost No disease questions in the entire test. There was 1 single station that genuinely asked about diseases, and it was a urinalysis that was the only somewhat difficult part of the test. However, people have been saying that the disease was actually diabetes mellitus. If it was this, then the disease should not have been asked about as it was not even on the disease list.
The lymphatic system disease section was surprisingly easy, with only three questions in total. This lack of depth in such an important area of study is concerning and suggests a need for a more balanced difficulty level in future tests. Once again, there was a question about a disease that wasn’t on the rules (although I believe that could easily be solved with the process of elimination, so its ok). There was another incredibly easy question which could be answered.
Division C topics were asked (which was ok i think for us, but unexpected) about excretory diuretics.
NO SHORT ANSWER or any actual analysis except that one question (station 14).
Not a single cardiac disease question.
Good stuff ig
Stations but not actually stations so its just like they wanted to be special.
However I really liked this format tbh but yeah it could be a pure test.
I think that this years systems are more suited to stations test tbh.
Kidney label question used a picture of an actual kidney
Most of excretory was actually at least regional level in most cases
The question about tonsil exudate was the only question that was actually somewhat difficult so I liked that.


I don't mean this in an insulting way btw but it was very dissapointing to see my partner and my extensive work go to waste.

[happy-the-puppy]

Fossils was amazing with the really really cool fossils. I also thought that optics was relatively well-balanced and just how I expected the div b test to be!

[studycircuit]

Geologic Mapping was honestly a very challenging test but I'd say that it was pretty fair. It was by one of the more math and map-heavy test that I've taken (as opposed to geology-heavy), which I liked considering the tendency for Geomapping tests to become Dynamic Planet tests (even though I'm probably biased as someone who's been focusing on the math and map sections all year).

[Idp2025]

Div C opinions
Anat:
Fun format, could've been a bit more patho focused with a few less stations (like 16 or so maybe) so they could be more in depth and difficult. I think it also would've felt a bit more satisfying if more radiology and histology was used for things other than lymphatic so more of the diagnostic procedures for the other systems were highlighted. Overall fun test though I really enjoyed it, I would write a bit more but a minute and a half stations made this whole test a blur for me... Sending good luck vibes.

Microbe:
This test was INCREDIBLE. I felt HORRIBLE at this event after we finished.
I think it got the experimental ideas of microbe that I always found the most interesting across really well, but by proxy felt a bit narrow in scope at times. I really love the idea of long sections that build up to culminating questions, but if I'm thinking objectively of the event being a test on what the rules say, it's hard to balance the sections with a format like that in practice.
Granted I only took a bit more than half of the test, but I think shorter sections probably could've done a better job of being a microbe mission test even if I think it would've made it a worse test in general. I also felt a slight disservice to the disease section being a large matching portion could've been remedied by smaller sections. Some of the sections on ggso that were like short vignettes on a specific cool thing about the pathogen (Namely the H. influenzae section) would've been nice to see on here. I felt like those made me think about and understand why the microbes were put on the list other than "they cause disease".
Definitely my favorite test of the year though, even though it might've not been the best test for the event as an event. Looking forward to an even better one next year, thank you for reading my yappage.

[studycircuit]

May as well use this thread for this,

I was the event supervisor for Geologic Mapping at Nationals this year. Overall I'm pretty satisfied with how things went. I was a little concerned that I might have made the test a bit too hard, but I think it ultimately turned out about how I would have liked, since teams were stronger than I was expecting. Scores ranged from around 53% at the high end to around 12% at the low end, with an approximately linear distribution, higher than the distribution at MIT (which was around 46% to 7%) despite a longer and much harder test. I'm especially happy that every aspect of the test had at least one team who appeared to know how to do it, even the most difficult ones. There were a couple questions that didn't have anyone get them right, but mainly out of circumstance - e.g. not getting all the way to the last problem in a section but showing a clear understanding of how to do it via answers to the previous questions. As a general rule, the higher-ranked teams succeeding by scoring a majority of points on almost all sections.

Retrospective on specific sections (only open the spoiler tags if you have already taken the test):

• Section A went quite well, a good range of teams who understood various aspects of it. This does have some of the questions that I would have liked to be able to split up more effectively - I prefer to isolate questions into small components for various reasons, including better gradation of comprehension, reduction of competitors' time spent writing and therefore more time spent thinking, and more efficient grading.
• Section B was the only section that any team scored full points on (although I believe said team actually ended up ranking somewhere in the middle). This section was written to be one of the easiest, and I'm pretty satisfied with how it worked out (although I didn't notice until very late that I had accidentally written gradient calculations into multiple sections...). The map is from the Sequatchie Valley in southeastern Tennessee.
• Section C was challenging to thread the needle between not requiring teams to be able to identify specific rocks, while still providing a good lead-in to examine metamorphism relatively independently of specific circumstances. There were a couple questions that I would have liked to have worded better (e.g. #19) but overall this went well.
• Section D was a tough write mainly because there's so much depth for the topic that it was difficult to condense it down into clear questions. I'm mostly satisfied with this, although I would have weighted the points for #27 a bit differently had I known which aspects of it teams would turn out to know well.
• Section E was a failure for me in the sense that I set out to try to write something specifically about the iron formations in northern Minnesota, where this map is from, but ultimately ended up not finding anything worth writing about (as well as lots of relatively poor-quality maps...) and just wrote a bunch of more standard mapping questions. For what it is it worked well I suppose, I'm fairly happy with how the actual questions turned out.
• Some aspects of Section F I would have liked to word better, but the longer questions I'm actually pretty satisfied with, despite having multi-part answers I was able to grade them pretty cleanly.
• Section G was pretty fun to write, and I was happy to see that there were teams who seemed to understand it well - no one got all three of the final calculations right, but many teams were able to correctly understand the nature of the problem and the effects of the various assumptions and parameters of the infinite slope model.
• For Section H I wanted to test competitors' understanding of map projections beyond the basics, and I needed a bit more math to hit the balance I was going for, so this kind of interpretation worked out nicely. Several teams scored full points on the last two questions, which was nice to see. I'm a little concerned that I may have made my boundaries for some of these questions a bit too narrow, since several teams were just a little bit outside the values on the key, which I don't tend to see on my numerical questions often - usually it's very clearcut with teams either getting the points or being wildly off.
• Section I required me to be careful with evidence presentation, but it worked out pretty well. No one was able to identify the shatter cone as such, but one or two teams did use the other evidence to conclude an impact event.

[Stitch2025]

For GeoMapping:
Section H: Really enjoyed all of the creative math. I felt there were a lot of geometric thinking problems (which probably benefited people with math backgrounds, so slight skew) which tested a lot more understanding as opposed to simply regurgitation. Last two were kinda crazy though. I had no idea how to approach them. Was considering doing some double integrals with a latitude and longitude angle but there's definitely a much faster way. Would love to hear how to do it! Otherwise, hooray for good math and thinking!


Section I: The meteor impact makes a lot of sense given the topography, but the geologic units were quite confusing for me. I had thought of it as a possibility but ended up ruling it out because of some things I noticed on the map. If I'm remembering correctly the crater walls were chemical sedimentary limestones/dolostones which doesn't really seem to match up with the shock metamorphism or debris settling one would expect. The region of higher elevation in the middle was also quite interesting. I haven't seen or heard of craters with that sort of resurgent dome type behavior <- this kinda made me lean caldera collapse but the rock units were very very not in agreeance with that.

In retrospect, I probably should've trusted my brain thinking shatter cone over cop out generic fault answer: slickensides, and thought about it more.


Something general I remember: some of the gradient questions were frustrating. In section I, I think I was searching for the contour lines on the river a straight minute because they were faint and also just contour line are weird. River seemed to be so flat that there were two contours along the entire mapped length which is kinda impresive. The other ones I was a little worried whether the question wanted the horizontal distance along the length of the river or as the crow flies. This would add significant variability and I don't remember the question specifying (I have seen tests ask for both cases without saying which they wanted).



Unfortunately don't remember the other sections and won't get to see for 5 months or smthn

[snowyowl]

Thank you so much to all test writers and event supervisors! I'm happy to share feedback on the four Division C events that I did.

Disease Detectives
My first impression was that the test was very long and my partner and I definitely struggled with the sheer number of pages that we had strewn across our desk. However, I think that it really covered all topic areas well (including some reasonable calculation-based questions; loved the R₀ and repeat testing concepts), and I like that it had a few trivia questions but mostly remained an application-based test. The questions were of reasonable and varied difficulty, although there was a lot of reading to be done (not necessarily a negative, just something that I'm remembering).

Experimental Design
I'm not sure how much I can reveal about the experiment, but I thought that it was a reasonable topic, although I didn't find that there was much room for creativity in terms of setting up the experiment (most teams likely had similar independent and dependent variables, I'd imagine?) The event supervisors/volunteers in my slot were fantastic and we had a great time testing.

Forestry
This test was substantially harder than any forestry test that my partner and I have taken before, but I found that the material assessed was restricted to a fairly narrow range of topics. The format for each station was somewhat repetitive (ID the specimens, answer some habitat/biogeography questions, etc.) and left minimal room for critical thinking. I thought that giving points for correct genus identification was a nice way of scoring the test, although I feel that writing common and scientific name in ID events is more of just busy work. Most questions were species-specific; other than the dendrochronology station I don't recall any type of plant biology or anatomy questions on the test, which I think are important additions to the otherwise repetitive nature of ID event tests. One final note: while some stations were incredibly challenging (the wood ID station, for example), the variety and quality of specimens was spectacular and that made for a fun, though mildly traumatizing experience.

Write It Do It
I never thought I would be writing about WIDI but I've come to love this event so much so here goes: I thought that the setup was solid in that it had some three-dimensional components, a variety of items, and some construction components (e.g setting up the safety pin). However, I also think that compared to other competitions, the build was fairly short and simplistic; time pressure was relatively minimal. The items were very "fixed" in the sense that there were no strings or pipe cleaners or drawing components (which can lead to more variation in size/shape) so that may have lowered the difficulty somewhat. I think because the build was more of an assortment of items rather than a cohesive setup with connections between components, that also kept it on the easier side. Now for a highly specific comment: the setup of items on the foam rectangle was a very unique touch and was a clever way of differentiating teams that could quickly create a code and describe the assortment of pieces; I'm not sure how the rubric treated it (hopefully not too many points/item)... it may have been a little on the tedious side in terms of how many elements there were in that section but the idea was fantastic.
(really these are just random personal thoughts (yaps, really) on what makes a WIDI test challenging/interesting but tl;dr: I'm glad that this was my final event and it was so enjoyable)

It's been a fantastic seven years of scioly competition and I'm so thankful for this memorable experience (wait sorry this was supposed to be somewhat objective and not at all sentimental lol)