<p>I received my email on Jan 25th to take the state written test.</p>
<p>ya im sure lots of states have more than 5 perfect scores- a huge amount of ppl take the test</p>
<p>They must be staggering the dates…I hope I hear back from them with some good news :)</p>
<p>I got my notification on Jan 25, also. And a side note, HansTAR, I am not a guy.</p>
<p>where r u from??</p>
<p>can you name me some states don’t won’t get 5 perfect scores.</p>
<p>i dont know which states in particular but since they get over 65000 entries i’m sure some do</p>
<p>the bigger the state the lower the chances of being a finalist</p>
<p>well I emailed the director of the Challenge and she told me that there was a seven-way tie with perfect scores in Florida, so I didn’t make it…and sorry Chaos777</p>
<p>Must be that the test bank was substantially redone this year to accommodate the new Travel Institute textbook, but something’s wrong with the design of the test if they have 7 perfect scores in any state. It didn’t help that the rules said no assistance allowed. That obviously didn’t stop some people from using Google and who knows what other references or outside help. Even still, they should have been able to write questions of sufficient difficulty that even Google searches would be problematic. I have seen a few of their questions in the past like this.</p>
<p>ya i emailed them 2 and they said all finalists had been notified</p>
<p>Thats why it makes sense to time it…that would prevent people from using outside help because the way it stands currently provides too much time to use outside resources.</p>
<p>Or better yet. Make it timed test like 50 questions in 5 minutes. That way nobody has the incentive to cheat or using google because you won’t be able to finnish (unless you can type alt-tab, google within 10 seconds per probblem). I thought the twenty minutes was way too long. </p>
<p>Sorry to those who didn’t make it. Same thing happened to me last year. And all the stuff from the national geography bee was even fresher in my mind back then.</p>
<p>have all finalists really been notified?</p>
<p>ya they have been</p>
<p>Finalists who googled the answers to the test will be up the creek in the next round, because it’s a written test with no access to computers or reference materials.</p>
<p>ya but still the people who cheated like that made it that far and took spaces that other people who actually knew more information should have had. i think their whole system needs to be revised in some way.</p>
<p>I googled 2-3 answers I didn’t know but certainly not near the entire test.</p>
<p>…a few answers. The problem is that the rules said no outside help. That was a mistake in my opinion. It just penalizes the ones that are conscientious enough to take it seriously. Of course the ones who relied on google/textbooks/big brother are in serious trouble on the state test. But it would have been much better to leave out the prohibition on non-human help (now human help is another matter, I think…). Makes for a more level playing field. I think the test is about the right length in time. You can’t get all the way through googling every answer. You have to get ahead on the ones you know in your head and then google/look up the few that are very difficult.</p>
<p>You really don’t want it shorter than about 15-20 minutes. The old Microsoft Encarta Bee had severe time limits (like about 60 questions in 5 minutes!) and believe me, even looking up the answers in Encarta, it was no fun! If it wasn’t in your head most of the time you were pretty much doomed by the 5th or 6th round…The rules allowed any and all help but still I imagine that even with all your friends on laptops searching Encarta it was still very frantic…</p>
<p>P.S. The AAATC director told me that one year one of the state finalists declined the chance to proceed to the state written exam because he admitted that he had received major help from his dad and realized that he would be toast on the written exams. Now that’s one honest kid…worth more than a scholarship IMHO.</p>
<p>How is it possible? I don’t know which one I got wrong. I thought I got them all right. How do people know that they have all been notified?</p>