<p>@observeraffect - Congrats! If my school calculated ranks right now, I think I would probably be 4 or 5…</p>
<p>My school doesn’t rank until senior year but to be quite honest, I hope they remove the ranking system come 2016. There’s no point to it in my opinion besides excessive competition. And I don’t believe that grades are an indication of “raw intelligence”.</p>
<p>The valedictorians/salutatorians for the past 5 years or so have all had around a 100 or 101 weighted GPA, but my grade is so cutthroat that half of all the AP students have above a 103.</p>
<p>@TeamRocketGrunt
I hate public forum now </p>
<p>* March Topic*
b]Resolved: Single-gender classrooms would improve the quality of education in American public schools**</p>
<p>@TheAtlantic What is the public forum?</p>
<p>College Lists or thoughts?</p>
<p>Mine:
- George Washington University
- University of Virginia
- William and Mary
- American University</p>
<p>University of Cambridge, University of Florida, Georgia Institute of Technology are the only three schools I’ve spent time researching. My test scores are already far above the norm for UF, so that should be a safe fallback. Cambridge is a nice reach and fairly cheap (3 years instead of 4, though 50,000 per year, though they award a MA for free to you three years after you graduate, which can save me money in the longer run) and it could allow me to get a job in England. Georgia Institute of Technology is a top 10 computer science school and I am within its score ranges already. I’m still not sure if I should pursue a Mathematics or Computer Science degree.</p>
<p>@ObserverAffect</p>
<p>Public Forum is a debate event that the National Speech & Debate Association does.
It’s one of 3 Debate Events. (or 4 if you count Congress)</p>
<p>Public Forum: Two teams of 2 battle over a topic that is “ripped from the headlines”. The topic changes every month. The arguments are supposed to be made intelligently and logically, but should still be simple enough for the random person off the street to explain. At that point, a random person (i.e the judge) will vote for who gave the best argument.</p>
<p>Lincoln-Douglas: 1 on 1 debate over a topic, that’s supposed to be focused around morality and philosophy, you essentially pick a “value” to uphold (say utilitarianism) and say why it outweighs the other person’s value, (say individual liberty), and how it relates to the topic. For example, the LD topic is: Placing political conditions on humanitarian aid to foreign countries is unjust</p>
<p>Policy Debate: Lol, I don’t have time to explain it. And I don’t even fully understand it. </p>
<p>Congressional Debate: It’s basically congress, where you’re judged on persuasion & speaking ability. You try to speak in favor or against a bill, and there are congressional procedures and stuff. It’s not really a debate cause there’s not a lot of clash though (but it is pretty fun). And depending on the circuit, you also are “open for questioning” after your speech, and people either try to ask softball questions to help you, or try to throw you off your game by making you look foolish.</p>
<p>Then there are speech events which I won’t get into, unless you want me to.</p>
<p>@TheAtlantic - I wish my school had a debate team now. That all sounds really fun. </p>
<p>@observeraffect - I did LD for about a year and a half…I don’t do it anymore because it required SO much time and research and although I liked debate, I wasn’t willing to put THAT much in. But I definitely recommend it if you think you’d be interested in that kind of stuff - personal preference, but I feel that LD is a lot more “fun” than pu-fo and policy (although the spreading/fast talking can be very annoying).</p>
<p>@catchininfinity I do the next best thing to debate offered at my school - mock trial. I wasn’t aware of what the main debate clubs are like, hence my confusion.</p>
<p>I was unable to attend the mock trial regionals due to my SAT II and my team lost as a result. (I was the only good attorney on the team; my PF partner was there, as well, but he was passable. Together, we could’ve carried the team.) I personally prefer PF to LD because having a partner makes it slightly less daunting. I started off doing policy but abandoned it two weeks before the competition and went for PF; tried to use policy tactics (spreading) and was called out for it. We would’ve gone on to finals, too, if the last judge didn’t have some sort of personal vendetta against the BBC. She literally told us that the reason she picked the other team is because one of the others was “relaxed, confident, and at ease” while my partner was “nervous.”</p>
<p>Horrid woman.</p>
<p>I’m debating on doing some of the easier speech events just to rack up NFL points. How many NFL points looks good for college apps? </p>
<p>^Spreading is a big no-no in PF. I’ve been called out a few times (but I’ve only lost like a round because of it). And doesn’t it take 2 judges to vote you down for you to not make finals?</p>
<p>lol I dunno. How many do you have right now?
This is my first year so I only should have like 313 (I think) cause it’s my first year.</p>
<p>My coach literally would have murdered me if I missed our mock trial competition, which was today actually.
Prosecution side lost by 1 point on two ballots and that was the first side that went, which knocked us out of the final round and my side crushed the team we were against in round two. Overall, I’m almost glad we didn’t make it to state, but two other teams from my school did, so it’s allll goood.</p>
<p>@observeraffect How was your mock trial competition?</p>
<p>and lol @TeamRocketGrunt why would you schedule to take your SAT II on the same day as your competition… … . . .</p>
<p>@TheAtlantic: Normally, yeah, but one of our competitors didn’t show up, so we only had 3 debates. Out of the three, we won two; the last judge down voted us. </p>
<p>I have two NFL points :D</p>
<p>My school only goes to one tournament per month, and I’ve been to only one tourney so far, where I quarterfinaled. Any tips on how to rack up points?</p>
<p>@loltired: My coach gave us the wrong date for the competition, so I registered. After I registered, she informed me of the correct date. By then, it was too late to cancel, and I didn’t want to wait until May to take the damned thing.</p>
<p>Generally if you do IEs you’re allowed to double enter (and I’m not familiar with Mississippi but you may be able to triple enter). I suggest Impromptu + Extemp (and then Congress). But if you’re talking about next year, I’d try Original Oratory + ??? depending on if you’re willing to write an OO over the summer.</p>
<p>@TeamRocketGrunt: Tbh, I really don’t think colleges look at NFL points? They’re probably going to look more towards how well you place at tournaments. I mean, you could sign up for multiple events each tournament, go to prelims in all of them, and not even break but rack up NFL points. So I don’t think NFL points alone is the best indicator of how good of a debater you are. Do what you love, seriously.</p>
<p>@TheAtlantic: 313 points is so good!!</p>
<p>@observereffect: Depending upon where you live, starting a debate club may not be that difficult, especially if you live in an area (like TX!) where there are a ton of local tournaments. It’d definitely look good on your college app, plus, it’s a lot of fun. Since you already do Mock Trial, you’re probably a good speaker and all that jazz. =)</p>
<p>@catchinginfinity: After freshman year, the person who was number 1 in my class had like a 104.5ish GPA. I can’t even imagine how high it’ll get to by the end of senior year. =P But it seriously SUCKS that your class just turned out to be so cutthroat. :/</p>
<p>//</p>
<p>So, it’s been a crazy flipping week. Our rank letter came, and everybody basically spazzed, as always happens. I don’t know why my school is so competitive about rank, le sigh. It’s quite annoying. But my rank went up, and so I can’t really complain. 
However, I also did sick, with a headache/congestion/sore throat thing going on, ugh. And then I went to a debate tournament, which, as you can imagine, wasn’t very good for my already sore throat…</p>
<p>So yeah. Interesting stuff. Is it just me, or is EVERYONE starting to get sick lately?</p>
<p>I calculated my numerical GPA the other day, and it’s a 99.92, which puts me at the top of the class.</p>
<p>I was laughing so hard when I realized how devastated the No. 2 person in my grade was (I know, really horrible, but this is the same person who thinks she’s a shoe in at Harvard)</p>
<p>@TeamRocketGrunt
I’ve gotta concur with @Almondjoy7 (and I just remembered that I hate almond joy’s)
They probably won’t look at points, they may look and see if you qualified (TOC, NCFL, NFL) {which is now the NSDA instead of the NFL} or if you have some state tournament success. Points aren’t the greatest indicator. Mississippi apparently competes in a few more events than Georgia (Television Commentary, Radio Speaking, wut). So those could also be a solution if you really want the points/rank up merit levels faster.</p>
<p>@TeamRocketGrunt @AlmondJoy7 - I’m confused. At your schools, do they just average your numerical grades for your GPA instead of weighting it on a 5 or six point scale?</p>
<p>That’s what mine does…just average the grades.</p>