Practice/Meeting Information
GWACC Constitution
Frequently Asked Questions:
What Does the GW Academic
Competition Club Do?
How Do I Get Involved?
What Are The Rules Like?
What Are The Questions
Like?
How Are National
Champions Decided?
How Good Are We?
What does the GW Academic Competition Club Do?
We are an organization of people who like to show off how much useless knowledge we have acquired by squaring off against people from other teams across the country in academic competition tournaments, such as College Bowl. In addition, we host tournaments where other people come to GW to show off how much useless knowledge they have acquired, and tournaments where GW students can compete against each other. In the process, players acquire even more unnecesary information.
If you've ever wanted to be or have been on Jeopardy, if you're the person everyone wants on their Trivial Pursuit team at family gatherings, if you have done or have wanted to do this sort of thing in high school or college (grad students welcome), if you think you know a lot about a bunch of books you've never read, movies you've never seen, paintings you've never looked at, and obscure world capitals, in short, information you have no other conceivable use for, this is probably for you.
If you regularly make references to failed TV sitcoms of ten years ago, pieces of classical music most people haven't heard of, international politics, or ancient mythology that sail over people's heads, or can quote the Bible, Shakespeare, the Constitution, "Pulp Fiction," or episodes of "The Simpsons," this is probably for you.
If you feel the need to do something competitive, and have no athletic
ability whatsoever (or even if you do have athletic ability), this might be for
you.
The first step is getting on our mailing list. To do so, just send an e-mail message to trivia@gwu.edu asking to be on the GWACC's mailing list. (Alternatively, you could contact one of our officers or active members.) Then attend a few practices.
Another thing you might like to do starting in Fall of 1999 is to put together a team of friends to compete for against other teams from GW in College Bowl intramurals. For more information on intramurals, click here.
Before long, you'll be ready to help represent GW at various tournaments and to help the GWACC host events of our own. To learn more about the tournaments we plan on attending this semester, simply click here. You can also view the results of past tournaments by visiting our archive. To learn more about previous tournaments we've hosted at GWU, click here.
Not everyone is eligible for every tournament; some tournaments are limited only to undergraduate freshmen and sophomores, others to first-year players regardless of status. Some other tournaments place limits on the number of graduate students (i.e. anyone with an undergraduate degree) per team. Some other tournaments, referred to generally as "Masters" tournaments, are open to non-student players as well.
A team in standard academic competition format generally has four people, though one can play with fewer. There is also a lockout buzzer system involved. There are two types of questions: tossup questions and bonus questions. The first player to ring in and correctly answer a tossup gets 10pts for his/her team, whether or not the moderator finishes reading the question. In some formats, one can recieve 15 points for an especially early buzz.
There is a five point penalty for "interrupts," incorrect guesses before the question is finished. (There is no penalty for incorrect guesses if either the question is finished or if the other team has already been penalized with an interrupt, although the latter is not the rule at all tournaments.)
Each time a team gets a toss-up, it can confer to answer a bonus question (which usually consists of two or more parts) worth up to 30 additional points. Conferring is usually completely disallowed on tossup questions, though in some formats players are allowed to "signal" their teammates that they know or don't know the answer to a question in non-verbal and non-written ways.
It may be best to think of it as Team Jeopardy, expect that you don't have to wait until Alex finishes reading the question to ring in.
Questions may cover just about anything, and their subject matter may not necessarily be associated with any academic field. College Bowl Inc. (CBI) questions tend to emphasize pop culture and current events in addition to more "traditional" academically-oriented subjects, and are brief (because the rounds are timed) and generally not very difficult, in a relative sense. ACF questions are explicitly academic (i.e. questions about pop culture, current events, or general knowledge are kept to a minimum), and are somewhat longer and tend to be more difficult, particularly for beginning players. Invitational questions tend to lie somewhere between the two extreme formats. NAQT, similarly, tries to strike a balance between the two extremes. The academic competition circuit has a protracted debate about which format is best, which you can try to follow if you read the USENET newsgroup alt.college.college-bowl, but might have more luck following on the Yahoo! quizbowl list, which is a bit more active now days.
For some sample questions, click here, designed to be about average for standard circuit tournaments, and don't worry if you didn't know the answers, or even most of the answers, since practices and tournament experience will teach you the knowledge that you need and/or the ability to guess on such questions. It's important to know that new players almost never start out as superstars, and it is not unusual for even players with a fair level of experience to go through a round and be utterly stumped by most of the question material.
How are national champions decided?
Well, I could tell you that there was a simple way to establish definitively
which team is best, but I'd be lying. Due to the different formats, each format
has its own champion. Think of it like pro tennis, which different players or
teams being best on different surfaces. There is also an informal player/coach
poll, whose results are archived here,
and every so often someone comes up with format-specific computer rankings.)
Some years a team just goes and wins everything outright (like Chicago in
1998-99) and makes everything easy, but this feat is rare. There are currently
three organizations, each with their own unique format, that sponsor regional
and national tournaments:
CBCI:
In February, the entity known as College Bowl Company, Incorporated (CBCI or,
more colloquially, CBI and/or The Company) holds its Regional Championship
Tournament (RCT), at which we compete against other schools in our region,
ACU-I Region 4 (which includes most of Pennsylvania and all of Maryland and
West Viriginia in addition to the District of Columbia.) Our region is
generally considered among the most competitive, with GW and other tradtional
powers like Johns Hopkins (Region 4 champs in 1996 and 1997), Pittsburgh (1998
RCT champion and runner up to GW in 1999), and Georgetown (1998 RCT runners-up)
in addition to other teams. GW won Region 4 in 1999 for the first time since
1995. Unfortunately, each school can send only one team; our team is chosen
based on knowledge/skill, areas of strong knowledge, practice/tournament
attendance, participation, and performance, and overall team chemistry; If we
win the RCT, or finish second and are lucky enough to get the wild-card spot
given to one of the 15 teams that finish second, we go to CBI's National Championship
Tournament (NCT) in late April. In 1997, GW did place second in Regionals, but
weren't chosen to go to Nationals; GW finished third at the 1998 RCT, held at
Carnegie-Mellon in Pittsburgh. Last year's RCT was held in Moravian
College in Bethlehem, PA ; the NCT, was held at the University of Florida in
Gainesville. Chicago defeated defending champs Michigan for the title in
1998-99. GW's team finished 7th out of 16 teams. This year, CBCI's RCT will be
held at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh, and the NCT will be held at Bentley
College in Waltham, Massachusetts.
ACF: If
we win any invitational ACF-format tournament, or qualify at ACF Regionals,
usually held the first weekend in March, we get to go to ACF Nationals, which
are also in April. ACF's regions are loosely defined and depend on what schools
host them in a given year. In our area, Regionals are always held at the
University of Maryland in nearby College Park, just a Metro ride away. We are
free to send multiple teams to ACF events, but a lot of us aren't crazy about
the format and it isn't for the faint of heart. The home team won ACF RCT's, as
usual, and we finished fourth. The location for the 1999 NCT for ACF was at
University of Chicago - we were unable to attend due to scheduling conflicts.
Chicago defeated Maryland for the title in 1998-99. ACF has not yet announced a
site for the 2000 NCT.
NAQT:
Much like ACF, the entity known as National Academic Quiz Tournaments, LLC
(NAQT) has loosely-defined sectionals (this year's SCT was in nearby
Catonsville, MD at the University of Maryland - Baltimore County ; other nearby
locales include Carnegie Mellon in Pittsburgh and Columbia in New York City)
held early in the Spring semester that do not serve as strict qualifiers for
their Championship Tournament, which is held soon after spring break. We are
allowed to send multiple teams to NAQT Sectionals if we so choose. We were
invited to last year's NAQT ICT was held in Ann Arbor, Michigan, at the
University of Michigan ; Chicago, last year's runner-up, defeated Cal-Berkeley
for the title. GW's team finished 11th out of 48 teams in the regular division.
This year the nearest Sectional to us is at the University of Virginia in
Charlottesville. This year's ICT will be held at Boston University.
How good are we?
Better than at football, that's for sure. :)
For a number of years, GW has had one of the top programs in the nation. We won Region 4 a number of years in a row prior to 1996, and won again in 1999, and placed 11th of 48 teams at the NAQT Intercollegiate Championship Tournament. We made the finals of two invitational tournaments during the 1996-97 season (in addition to our second-place finish at CBI Regionals), and the semifinals of yet another. In 1997-98, our highest tournament finish was third place. In 1998-99 we won CBI regionals and were competitive nearly everywhere we went. Seldom have our best teams ended up in the bottom half of a tournament field. As of the last players/coaches' poll, GW narrowly missed the top 25 ; GW's ranking as of the end of the 1998-99 season was #12.
At present, the team is in a rebuilding mode; on the down side, that likely means few opportunities to win tournaments, but, on the up side, means that there are many opportunities for new players to get in on the ground floor. Nonetheless, our teams have continued to do fairly well competitively at the tournaments we have attended.
Is There Anything Else I Should Know?
Yes. The answers, of course. :)
FAQ created by Tim Young. Last updated 6/27/00.
Return to the GWACC Home Page