Academic Challenge competition gets underway this month

The 2016 Worldwide Youth in Science and Engineering Academic Challenge for high school students gets underway this month at sites across Illinois. The competition, administered by the University of Illinois College of Engineering culminates in state finals at the University of Illinois from April 11-14 and at the Missouri University of Science and Technology on April 19.

Regionals will be conducted from Feb. 1-18 at 32 sites across the state of Illinois. Advancement to sectionals is based on the number of teams competing within each division at the regional site. Sectionals will be conducted at nine sites across the state from March 1-18.

Academic Challenge actually started out as Illinois JETS in the 1960s, and then became Academic Challenge in 1996. Students compete in 14-member varsity teams or as individual at-large competitors. Each student takes 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.

The College of Engineering at the University of Illinois grants a $2,000 and $1,000 scholarship to Illinois individual first-place and second-place winners, respectively, in each STEM subject at the State Finals to be used by students who will major in an engineering field at the U of I.

Schools competing in the Academic Challenge competition are divided into four divisions based on enrollment. Schools with enrollments larger than 1,500 students will compete in the Unlimited Division; schools from 701-1,500 students compete in Division 1500; schools with 301-700 students compete in Division 700; and schools with enrollments of 300 or fewer compete in Division 300. The tests are the same in each division.

The goal of Academic Challenge is to acquaint high school students with the course content and level of competition that they will experience upon entering a science or engineering curriculum at the college or university level. Consequently, the test content will challenge the brightest students.