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We are pleased to announce that the fourth annual MIT Science Olympiad Invitational Tournament will be held on Saturday, January 20, 2018, on the campus of MIT in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Registration will open in mid-September, and our new website will be live in the next couple of weeks.

All of the team-friendly and coach-friendly features of the 2017 tournament will be back in full force. We'll run all 23 Division C national events, including lab and engineering events, with a schedule mirroring the National Tournament schedule as closely as possible. All events will be written, reviewed, and run by Science Olympiad alumni currently at MIT, national tournament event supervisors, and/or former Science Olympiad competitors from the highest level of competition. This means that coaches will not be required to write tests or otherwise volunteer at the invitational, leaving them free to focus solely on coaching their own teams. And, of course, competitors will experience the beauty and craziness of MIT.

We are incredibly proud that the 2017 MIT Science Olympiad Invitational Tournament attracted teams from across the United States. Ten of the top fifteen teams at this year’s National Tournament attended our invitational. We are also proud to have hosted a bevy of new and up-and-coming teams for whom the MIT invitational was one of their first invitationals, giving them a rare chance to field-test their teamwork and skills in advance of their respective state tournaments. As always, we will strive to make every event challenging yet accessible to all.

Early on, the founders of Science Olympiad at MIT decided that the directorship of the MIT tournament would change each year to encourage fresh thinking and ensure the sustainability of the organization. As we say good luck to Stephen Tang (class of 2017) on his future endeavors, we are also excited to announce that Josh Segaran (2019) will be joining Katie Shade (2018) as co-director for this year’s tournament.

The goal of Science Olympiad at MIT remains to enrich the Science Olympiad experience of high school students across the country. To that end, we hope to see you all at the tournament in January!

Which hotels near MIT are the most affordable? My team does not receive funding from the school, so we are hoping to make the trip as economic as possible.

Tfw administration doesn't let us go to mit because it is close to finals weekend *tears*

Any idea if Disease and Fermi will be moved into different blocks? If so which?

antoine_ego wrote:Any idea if Disease and Fermi will be moved into different blocks? If so which?

I expect they will be self-scheduled like last year. Unrestricted self-scheduling seems to have gone very well in the last few years, I'm wondering when another tournament will pick that up.

Unome wrote:

antoine_ego wrote:Any idea if Disease and Fermi will be moved into different blocks? If so which?

I expect they will be self-scheduled like last year. Unrestricted self-scheduling seems to have gone very well in the last few years, I'm wondering when another tournament will pick that up.

It is an interesting approach. My concern as a tournament director would be too many teams choosing to complete Disease during the last couple of sessions. Depending on the test, that could cause a significant grading delay to awards. I'm still confused as to why National's chose to put Fermi - the easiest event to grade - during the impound period when there are other events (read: XPD) that could use the extra time to grade.

nicholasmaurer wrote:My concern as a tournament director would be too many teams choosing to complete Disease during the last couple of sessions. Depending on the test, that could cause a significant grading delay to awards.

The only reason I could think of for uneven sessions would be because of teams not competing. What reason in particular are you thinking of that would make teams tend to sign up for later sessions? In addition, the lack of restrictions on placing multiple teams from the same school in different timeslots would mean no need for buffer spots, so much less chance of uneven sessions.

Fermi in impound... I guess there could be difficulty acquiring enough space to do XPD in impound, but there are still plenty of other events besides Fermi. With two people, they could finish grading in about an hour (or less).

Unome wrote:

nicholasmaurer wrote:My concern as a tournament director would be too many teams choosing to complete Disease during the last couple of sessions. Depending on the test, that could cause a significant grading delay to awards.

The only reason I could think of for uneven sessions would be because of teams not competing. What reason in particular are you thinking of that would make teams tend to sign up for later sessions? In addition, the lack of restrictions on placing multiple teams from the same school in different timeslots would mean no need for buffer spots, so much less chance of uneven sessions.

There's no systemic reason to necessarily expect more schools to register in the later sessions. However, I could easily see it happening by coincidence. In any case, running Disease for all teams during impound hasn't drawn many complaints that I'm aware of, so I wouldn't expect many tournaments to switch models.

nicholasmaurer wrote:

Unome wrote:

nicholasmaurer wrote:My concern as a tournament director would be too many teams choosing to complete Disease during the last couple of sessions. Depending on the test, that could cause a significant grading delay to awards.

The only reason I could think of for uneven sessions would be because of teams not competing. What reason in particular are you thinking of that would make teams tend to sign up for later sessions? In addition, the lack of restrictions on placing multiple teams from the same school in different timeslots would mean no need for buffer spots, so much less chance of uneven sessions.

There's no systemic reason to necessarily expect more schools to register in the later sessions. However, I could easily see it happening by coincidence. In any case, running Disease for all teams during impound hasn't drawn many complaints that I'm aware of, so I wouldn't expect many tournaments to switch models.

I was mainly talking about removing restrictions on teams from the same school being in the same timeslot where self-scheduling is used. Every other tournament I know of that uses any self-scheduling restricts teams from the same school to be in the same timeslot.

nicholasmaurer wrote:It is an interesting approach. My concern as a tournament director would be too many teams choosing to complete Disease during the last couple of sessions. Depending on the test, that could cause a significant grading delay to awards. I'm still confused as to why National's chose to put Fermi - the easiest event to grade - during the impound period when there are other events (read: XPD) that could use the extra time to grade.

MIT uses Avogadro I believe, which limits the number of teams per slot that can sign up

So they could in theory cap the later blocks at a smaller amount of teams or something