Biology Olympiad

[Redden380_]

Hi all,
I am currently looking at doing the Biology Olympiad for 2021, and I was wondering what I could do to best prepare myself to ace the olympiad. If anyone has any knowledge regarding this topic, feel free to provide some tips, it will be greatly appreciated! FYI: I'll be heading into Year 10 in 2021.
Thanks 

[SmartWorker]

Hi all,
I am currently looking at doing the Biology Olympiad for 2021, and I was wondering what I could do to best prepare myself to ace the olympiad. If anyone has any knowledge regarding this topic, feel free to provide some tips, it will be greatly appreciated! FYI: I'll be heading into Year 10 in 2021.
Thanks 

Hey,

For the biology olympiad it is primarily testing your ability to solve application based questions and is not an assessment of your capacity to recall specific information, albeit there was a few questions on this year's olympiad but it was very basic biology knowledge. So to develop your problem solving skills attempt practice questions.

https://www.asi.edu.au/programs/past-exams/biology-olympiad-past-exams/
Here is a link to past exam papers, it will be useful to go through a couple at least. A few days before the exam I did the 2018 exam and another exam, and for the questions I got wrong, I would critically analyse why I got it wrong, usually its not due to my lack of biological knowledge but rather a misunderstanding or incorrect logical sequence of explanation.

Don't worry about completing too many exams, if you have the time go for it! But usually a couple or few exams is sufficient to do well on the olympiad Hope that helps.

[Redden380_]

Hey,

For the biology olympiad it is primarily testing your ability to solve application based questions and is not an assessment of your capacity to recall specific information, albeit there was a few questions on this year's olympiad but it was very basic biology knowledge. So to develop your problem solving skills attempt practice questions.

https://www.asi.edu.au/programs/past-exams/biology-olympiad-past-exams/
Here is a link to past exam papers, it will be useful to go through a couple at least. A few days before the exam I did the 2018 exam and another exam, and for the questions I got wrong, I would critically analyse why I got it wrong, usually its not due to my lack of biological knowledge but rather a misunderstanding or incorrect logical sequence of explanation.

Don't worry about completing too many exams, if you have the time go for it! But usually a couple or few exams is sufficient to do well on the olympiad Hope that helps.

Oh, thank you!
Do you know of any good resources that I could use to learn some of the more advanced topics, I just had a flick through the practice exams and some of the content seems quite foreign to me. Again, thank you, I will listen to your advice.

[SmartWorker]

Oh, thank you!
Do you know of any good resources that I could use to learn some of the more advanced topics, I just had a flick through the practice exams and some of the content seems quite foreign to me. Again, thank you, I will listen to your advice.

I did the olympiad while being in year 11 and doing VCE Bio 3/4, having a firm foundation in biology is important so I would recommend get the jacaranda units 3/4 textbook if you can (a caveat: this is certainly not mandatory to do well in this olympiad), general advice like with any subject matter, is if you don't understand something, read up on it, find videos on YouTube explaining the particular concept. Given that you are in year 10 next year, I would primarily just advise being inquisitive about biology in general, and explore concepts/ideas that interest you in further detail.

https://www.asi.edu.au/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/ASO_Biology_NQE_Syllabus.pdf

Here is a syllabus that the ASI has created for the Olympiad. NB: This is not an exhaustive list.