Registration Underway for 2016 Academic Challenge

“It’s not any different than a sport,” says Julia Doll, faculty advisor for the Academic Challenge team at Edwardsville High School. “It’s the same type of competition and adrenaline level.”

Doll’s team advanced to the 2015 state finals in the Unlimited Division and will be looking to so again this year. Registration is underway for the 2016 Academic Challenge (formerly the Worldwide Youth in Science and Engineering Academic Challenge), sponsored by the University of Illinois College of Engineering. High school teams have until December 15 to register for the statewide competition, which like other sports, include Regional (in February), Sectional (in March), and State Final (in April) rounds. The organizers are hoping to expand on the number of teams involved in the event and are offering new schools a chance to have their registration fee waived.

The overall goal of the program is to attract a greater number of talented and diverse students to careers in engineering and the sciences. The University of Illinois offers scholarships to the top individual first-place and second-place winners in each STEM subject who decides to enroll in the College of Engineering.

Students compete in 14-member varsity teams or as individual at-large competitors. At each level, students take two exams. There are seven subject areas from which each student chooses their two tests -- biology, chemistry, computer science, engineering graphics, English, mathematics and physics. The materials for tests are drawn from senior high school and freshman level college curricula and are written by teams of college and university faculty. Each test production team produces three tests of increasing levels of difficulty for the Regional, Sectional and State Finals.

“It’s a great opportunity for the University of Illinois to be able to host and organize an event like this,” said the competition director Sahid Rosado Lausell. “The College of Engineering produces some of the brightest minds in the world. Putting on the Academic Challenge competition is a way we can celebrate and encourage students to study STEM fields. We hope to see many of them as students on our campus sometime soon.”

Schools competing in the Academic Challenge competition are divided into four divisions based on enrollment – unlimited (schools over 1,500), Division 1,500 (schools 701-1,500), Division 700 (schools 301-700) and Division 300 (schools with 300 or fewer students).  Last year, around 1,500 students from over 200 schools advanced to the State Finals, which are held on the University of Illinois campus. 

2015 Results

“I really like the academic competition,” said Gabriella LeFevre, a competitor from Hononegah High School. “It’s unparalleled to anything else I’ve ever participated in."