Fulton and Alsbury Science Olympiad

2019-2020 FA Science Olympiad Application HERE!

What Is Science Olympiad?

Science Olympiad is a team competition for middle school (referred to by Science Olympiad as Division B) and high school (referred to as Division C) students.

There are currently over 7,000 Science Olympiad teams across the country with Southern California having the largest regional competition in the Nation.  A school’s team has up to 15 members who will compete at Invitational, Regional, State, and National competitions. Teams can also have alternate members, although those members won’t compete except in special circumstances.

Middle school (Div. B.) has 23 different events that cover nearly every area of science, from earth science to cell biology to robotics, engineering and more. Each competition will include all 23 events. Each team member is typically assigned three or four events.  Most events consist of two people working on them, although for some events, like Experimental Design and Codebusters, you are allowed to have three members on the event.

The Science Olympiad team members meet from September through April.  A team is usually assembled in the fall and competitions are held from December to April. If more than 15 people at our school want to join Science Olympiad, the coaches will hold tryouts, similar to sports teams. Candidates will typically take science tests, perform engineering builds, and the 15 students who score the highest will make the team.

What Do Members of Science Olympiad Do? 

Science Olympiad members spend most of their time preparing for their events. You will have to meet regularly for each of your 3-4 events to do well in competitions. Each event will have its own meeting time when you will work with your teammate(s) for that event as well as an event coach (usually a teacher but can also be a parent or other adult who knows the subject or wants to learn about it). Our Science Olympiad Team meets Mondays through Thursdays from 2:30 to 5:00 p.m.  We are also planning this year to include a field trip to the La Brea Tar Pits History Museum in Los Angeles.

How are Event Coaches Recruited?

Our team is always looking for interested community members, parents, teachers, retired or current engineers who would like to help coach a Science Olympiad event.  Our goal is to have a coach for each of the 23 events we are competing on.  Anyone interested in receiving more information please contact our school secretary at (661) 206-0120.

How Do Science Olympiad Competitions Work?

Competitions are the main purpose of Science Olympiad; they are why you’re doing all that studying and preparation! Competitions are often held on college campuses, and the whole team (along with coaches) will travel to them to participate.

Smaller competitions, such as Invitational and Regionals, often last only a day, but State and National competitions usually take place over an entire weekend. Different events compete throughout the day; your team will be given a schedule several weeks ahead of time, so you know when your individual event competitions take place.

For most events, members for that event from all schools will compete at the same time, although for some building events teams compete one at a time throughout the day. Your team will be assigned a homeroom, and when you’re not competing, you can prepare for your other events, relax, or meet people from other schools.

Award ceremonies are held at the end of the day on the last day of competition. Medals are awarded to the top 6 teams in each event, and all-around awards are also given to the schools that had the highest scores when all event scores are combined.

Teams advance to different competition levels together. That means that, even if you get first place in some events in your Regional competition, you will not advance to State unless your team did well enough overall to advance.

At the end of all our competitions, we celebrate our season by hosting a team banquet thanking all of our volunteered coaches for their commitment to our Science Olympiad team.