Tuesday, September 1, 2009

Re: Olympiad experience

I have my own two cents about the olympiads. I took biology and chemistry olympiads last year. Was one of three from NUS High to be shortlisted into practical round for bio, ended up with a bronze. For chemistry, got a silver eventually, and went for IChO phase 1 training.

Biology

Since 2008 there has been a new syllabus. It is now 2 hours of 200 MCQ - they are given in four sets of 50 per half hour. Yes, you have to finish 50 questions in 30 minutes... x 4. It's sort of like SATs, you cannot go on to the next section even if you've already finished the previous section.

Also, it is true that we NUS High students are weaker at the molecular biology perspective. Last year when I took the SBO theory paper, I found that I could answer most of the questions about classical biology, but the section on biochemistry/cell biology completely stumped me. There are questions that ask stuff you don't even learn about in University Year 1 (having taken NUS Year 1 bio modules I think I am qualified to say this).

SBO, as Zhongming has said, really does involve a good grasp of biology as a whole. If you only memorise the Campbell and Reece textbook, you'll be able to answer maybe 30% of the questions only. The other 70% comes from application and experimental design.

For those currently taking the bio olympiad module, I scored an average of 38/50 for the quizzes/tests and I got a bronze in the end, which should give you an idea of what you should be aiming for. Of course the bronze is also affected by my performance in the practicals (which I personally think was average so-so only) – so perform better, your practical score may be able to push you to a silver.

Practical – just hope you've done the experiments before. They are quite basic but some of the questions are tricky. Some things like dissection of seeds, I haven't done before. Also weird questions involving coefficient of inbreeding, usage of dichotomous keys to classify organisms. I think it requires you to be able to think on your feet and quickly absorb whatever information is given to you, and answer the questions based on what details you are given and the basic concepts you already know. Most of the practical specimens will have funny body parts you've never heard of before, or protocols you've never done, or methods of analysis you have never experienced. The only thing that was familiar to me was identifying mutations of Drosophila.

The practical round, fyi, involved 4 labs. Each lab was 1.5 hours long with 2-5 activities per lab. You will need to work fast and be able to handle simultaneous experiments. I wrote a document listing all the details of the 2008 practical round and gave it to Dr Tang, so ask him if you wanna see what we had to do last year.

A point to note is that for the quizzes, honestly I didn't study at all, unlike some of my peers. I've been making notes for each module so far, so before the quiz, I'd read through my notes on the topic, and then just go and do. Same for the actual SBO (I regret not studying more; might have gotten a silver if I'd worked for it). Which means if you have been actively studying bio, and take the time and effort to actually revise the textbook, you'll probably do better.

Some stats on absolute scoring for SBO. I was talking to an ex-classmate who represented Singapore in IBO this year, and from what she says, it seems as though the threshold for gold is 50%. I'm not sure about silver and bronze - my bet is on 40% and 30% but it may well be 45% and 40% too. Yes it seems easy, you just need to pass to get a gold, but keep in mind that Singapore has performed best in Biology for the international olympiads so far (students always come back with at least a silver), and that shows something about our local SBO standards.

In the 2008 SBO there were 2 golds, 3 silvers and 6 bronzes :) nice, huh. The students that went on to IBO were the four best, and they came back with 3 golds and 1 silver. Also, two of the gold medallists got 1st and 3rd individual overall; the other gold medallist was 14th. In the world.


Chemistry

As said earlier Singapore does pretty well for IChO but not as well as IBO. For studying chemistry, I think as long as you're familiar with the NUS High syllabus, it will pull you through SChO at least. Be very grounded in physical chem, and just pray very hard that you know how to answer the inorganic chem questions – there is NO WAY you can memorise all you need for inorganic chem, it's really your luck. Our school syllabus for organic chem is more than enough for SChO even if you didn't take the advanced module.

For the practical, take note of what they're testing you, because they'll test the exact opposite for the IChO selection test.

The whole SChO team from NUS High last year obtained medals with all those going into the practical round obtaining at least a silver. So it shouldn't be too difficult.

IChO phase 1 training: Every wednesday in NUS for about seven weeks or so, then two full days during the March holidays at NIE, then they test you.

The IChO selection test was a complete disaster for me. The lecturers that crash course you don't actually teach you anything at all; you should read up on the topics yourself. The content is also further than the school syllabus, ESPECIALLY FOR ORGANIC CHEMISTRY and SPECTROSCOPY. If you have the book Organic Chemistry by Clayden, Greeves, Warren and Wothers, it will really help you. Looking up concepts in Physical Chemistry by Atkins is also good. Last but not least, it will be very useful if you've had experience in multi-spectra analysis (i.e. MS, IR, UV and NMR) - you need to be able to interpret spectra quickly.

And yes, it is 9 problems in 3 hours – you need to work fast and be very good at the concepts they teach. The instructors tend to set the selection test harder than the IChO preparatory problems given (for example, I couldn't do the steady-state approximation problems in the selection test but I could easily do all those in the prep problems).

IChO selection test also has biochemistry, so if you take bio it is really to your advantage (I had a much easier time compared to some of my physics/chem peers for the biochem section). Taking LSM1101 in NUS was also a huge help. Michaelis-Menten kinetics applied to transformations of Lineweaver-Burke plots, properties of zwitterions, the chemistry of catalytic sites – they are all tested. Not to mention simple biochemistry in the advanced organic chem module, such as structure of proteins, sugars, Haworth and Fischer projection, etc.

The physical chem should not be a problem for anyone in NUS High who has been getting As for the phys chem modules.

Okay that's all I have to say.

No comments:

Post a Comment