The Quizbowl Resource Center

First, if this is the wrong place to put this, I apologize and hope it will find its way to the right part of this fine board.


Anywho, as the head of Brandeis' program, I was wondering where the people on this board are applying or hoping to go to college next year. I am trying to get a head start on recruiting and I would love to answer any questions anyone has about Brandeis (I also know a bunch about BU, NYU, Rutgers and Yeshiva.) So, you can contact me at danpass @ brandeis . edu (remove spaces).


Also interested in hearing where non-Brandeis applicants are going.

Dan

Well, there is another forum, entitled "seniors", where high school seniors have said where they plan on/are going next year, and others have mentioned their plans next year in outside fora, but I don't think there has been a poll such as yours so far. As for me, I was excepted early decision to the University of Virginia next year and at least check out college bowl for a year before I completely rule out the possibility of doing it. The other two 2004 TJ A and B people also are going to UVA next year, but I don't know what their thoughts on college bowl are.

I think this would probably best fit under Misc. HSQB; it should have its own thread, though, because, as Laszlow noted, it has distinct information from "seniors"... but it definitely doesn't seem to fit under Theory. Matt will handle that, though.

As for me, I'm going to the Univ. of Georgia next year (accepted early action) and will give college quiz bowl a shot. I can't go cold turkey after 8 years of it, but I'll just have to see how it fits into whatever else I might wanna do and with the people I choose to associate with. But I'll definitely look at it seriously.

im going to the University of Florida (early descision) 8) and i am hardcore going to play quizbowl. at least thats what i say now...college bowl players keep telling me im going to be scared off, but i hope not, because college bowl sounds like a lot of fun :D

I'm going to TAMU. Dunno if I'll play. Depends on my mood at the time.

Going to U Ark. Gonna try quiz bowl at least and I'll hopefully get into it. I'll probably still keep up with high school though, even when I graduate.

I am either going to the University of Georgia or Florida State University. Either way, I want to play college quiz bowl.

UGA or FSU?!?! you could do so much better.

(<--UF grad)

I'll be at the University of Georgia. Hear that the program there isn't exactly fun.

If the University of Mississippi will start a team (and I think they will), then I will continue to play in college.

Golden Tiger 86 wrote:If the University of Mississippi will start a team (and I think they will), then I will continue to play in college.

They showed up at Princeton last year.

I applied to 7 schools (big mistake), gotten accepted into two of them, offered money and have yet to hear from the other 5... Ideally I'd like to go to Princeton, William & Mary or George Washington...

And I intend to do quizbowl in college, mostly for fun, if my school has it. I won't be like any good though, haha. I guess we'll know in a month... ::crosses fingers::

Good old Ohio U! Yeah, I hope to play, but I have not even found out if they actuall have a team. The people I have talked to seem to know nothing of college life and activites (read: Admissions couselors), but if they don't, I am sure I can start one. Hope to seem some of you guys (or gals) in college bowl!

I got in early action to Harvard and Interim to Rice.... both have quiz bowl teams right?

I know I want to keep playing, but Im not sure if I'm good enough. My team is one of the best... but on the West Coast which doesn't count for that much. I suppose I could just moderate.

hey hydrant, if you do quiz bowl at HU next year, maybe i will. lol, we'd probably get trashed by the veterans.

UVA here. I'll try it, I'll probably do it permanently 'cause let's be honest, what else am I gonna do?

I don't think I'll be very good, but we'll see how bad I am when I get there.

Going to GaTech...not sure if I'm going to play or not.

harshrealm wrote:I'll be at the University of Georgia. Hear that the program there isn't exactly fun.

I heard that rumor too. But the people I've met seem nice enough... We'll see. But there's enough of us from this board, maybe we'll make it better!

Matt Weiner wrote:

Golden Tiger 86 wrote:If the University of Mississippi will start a team (and I think they will), then I will continue to play in college.

They showed up at Princeton last year.

OK, thanks Matt.

NoahMinkCHS wrote:

harshrealm wrote:I'll be at the University of Georgia. Hear that the program there isn't exactly fun.

I heard that rumor too. But the people I've met seem nice enough... We'll see. But there's enough of us from this board, maybe we'll make it better!

They seem to be somewhat focused on trash, maybe you can strike a mutually agreeable deal to restart an academic program there.

My golden cousin, talk to David Steele: [email protected] David e-mailed me about NAQT Sectionals, but they had to pull out because of funding and transportation issues. David can tell you more about Ole Miss quiz bowl. Plus, he was a Wesley Clark supporter. Anyway, I'm sure you will have a big hand in reviving Ole Miss's program.

To wampus04, we can tell you more about Arkansas Quiz Bowl at Morrilton. See ya there.

--Josh, P. t. altaica

So far I've only gotten a decision back from Georgia Tech, but they're my top choice so I'll probably end up going there. I'm pretty sure that I'm not going to play college bowl, though.

harshrealm wrote:I'll be at the University of Georgia. Hear that the program there isn't exactly fun.

To hell with Georgia! :D

a5ehren wrote:Going to GaTech...not sure if I'm going to play or not.

The answer to that question is yes, especially considering you're a lot better than I am. :P

Also, as for UGA....their "Tournament by the Sea" next weekend will feature things like "style points" and the ability to "foul out" after you get three negs.

That is all.

I applied to 4 schools, but am only seriously considering 3. I was accepted Interim Decision to Rice and have been offered a very nice scholarship to the Honors College of the University of SC...and won't hear from Princeton until April...or some such.

Anyways...unlike the vast majority of the posters...i WILL NOT be playing in college, mostly because I hate, hate, hate trash and NAQT (synonomous, right?). Also, college players, in general, scare me. But good luck to everyone who shall make the attempt. And here is to college and freedom in general.

Shelley

Shelley wrote:I applied to 4 schools, but am only seriously considering 3. I was accepted Interim Decision to Rice and have been offered a very nice scholarship to the Honors College of the University of SC...and won't hear from Princeton until April...or some such.

Anyways...unlike the vast majority of the posters...i WILL NOT be playing in college, mostly because I hate, hate, hate trash and NAQT (synonomous, right?). Also, college players, in general, scare me. But good luck to everyone who shall make the attempt. And here is to college and freedom in general.

Shelley

Man, I wish there were more college players with your mindset. (and I don't mean that sarcastically, I also fucking hate trash and wish it would go away and die).

Also, the saving grace is the ACF format, which makes the game a lot more interesting, relies on knowing things rather than speed or ability to memorize stock leadins, and is purely academic. I find it a lot more fun than NAQT or any crappy trash tournament. By the way, if you do end up coming to Princeton, at least consider stopping by one of our practices, even if you don't plan to keep playing.

Hey Golden Tiger 86,

You might also contact Joey Odom when you get to Ole Miss. He's a freshman in the Honors College at the moment. He was the captain of our team last year (St. Andrew's). I'm sure he'd love to help start a program there.

He's the best math player I've ever seen. He's good at other things as well, but untouchable at math.

gosaints wrote:Hey Golden Tiger 86,

You might also contact Joey Odom when you get to Ole Miss. He's a freshman in the Honors College at the moment. He was the captain of our team last year (St. Andrew's). I'm sure he'd love to help start a program there.

He's the best math player I've ever seen. He's good at other things as well, but untouchable at math.

In case you kids didn't know this, there's no (or, at most, a negligable ammount of) computational math in college. I know that drove a lot of my teammates from high school away from the college game.

MaS

pakman044 wrote:It's very difficult to do multivariable calculus, linear algebra, or differential equations in 15 seconds or less.

Patrick King

Well, maybe for you. Anyway, the point is, no computational math. I'm actually somewhat surprised that the "savvy" high schoolers around here didn't (seem to) know this already... though I know I have made an unreasonable assumption in concluding this (and I don't care. I'm crazy like that.)

Oh, and by the way, this is a link to the University of Michigan's Maize Pages "Directory", which Directory is the closest thing to an exhaustive list of college quizbowl programs that exists (to my knowledge.) If you're wondering if the institute of higher learning that you have your heart set-on has a program (and, in most cases, how you can contact its leader if it does,) this is the link for you.

MaS
---
This is my 1st positive post!

I've split the (very worthwhile, I think) discussion of math in high school quizbowl to a new thread in the Theory forum, deftly entitled The Role of Math in High School Quizbowl.

MaS

I didn't post this up until now because I had to move it to a new web site but:

The Entering Freshman Contact List is back up and running. For several years I've tried to collect all the information I can about where seniors are going, so that teams know they are coming to that school, or if they wish, they can form teams at schools currently without teams. If you're a senior or know seniors, you can go to:

http://www.fraughtmachine.com/efcontact/

and you can fill in a form that will get directed to contacts at that school. There is also a listing for last year, and the past three years, so if you're going to a school and looking for teammates, you can use this to help you. It's open to any seniors, or people looking to be contacts at schools. I already have a couple dozen for this year, and I want to beat last year's numbers.

Dwight, is there a way schools can be contacted as soon as someone signs up for the list? This would be helpful instead of just finding out at one time.

Also, shameless plug. We need freshmen at Brandeis.

My team captain will be attending Brandeis next year. I forwarded a link to this thread to her after your first post.

ooh I just got into Williams... do they even have a team? no one seemed to know when I visited... :|

Williams was at NAQT Nationals last year.

Jason Mueller

I had it rigged up that way once before, where it would automatically relay, but I got someone trying to spam the list, and I had to deactivate it. I'm hesitant to wire it up that way again. Right now, I have it where it drops an email alert to me, and saves the info, whereupon I kick it out to the teams, and then I'll release it, once I'm sure it's not trying to attack.

Applied to Harvard, Yale, MIT, and University of Michigan.

So far I've gotten into Michigan, been rejected from MIT, and haven't heard back from Harvard and Yale.

I'll be playing QB wherever I end up.

Shelley Writes:
"Anyways...unlike the vast majority of the posters...i WILL NOT be playing in college, mostly because I hate, hate, hate trash and NAQT (synonomous, right?)."

As a USC Honors College Alum and current USC law student, you can't go wrong with the HC but Rice and Princeton are great schools, of course. Anyway, the USC Academic Team hates trash and NAQT too and tries to attend as many purely academic tournaments as possible. So don't rule academic team out if you go to USC. Some teams love the trash, but we stay away from it. Please e-mail me if you have any questions.

Eric Douglass
University of South Carolina School of Law, '05[/quote]

I'm going to Harding and definitely will play and build bitter rivalries with U of A and TAMU. :)

buzzermaster wrote:I'm going to Harding and definitely will play and build bitter rivalries with U of A and TAMU. :)

Hey good luck. Two of the kids from my church go there.

Hey Jason-Does Harding really have quiz bowl? I'll be there in the fall! Maybe we'll be on the same team-if I decide to play. : )

Next year i'll be attending grad school at Florida. Hopefully me, Kelli, Zach (MC's leading scorer), and either Jeremy* (MC's science guy) or Jason from DCC can make up a team at UF.

*Jeremy's still waiting to hear from Stanford, but the rest of us have committed to UF.

banananut wrote:Hey Jason-Does Harding really have quiz bowl? I'll be there in the fall! Maybe we'll be on the same team-if I decide to play. : )

Harding by my research seems to at least be a customer of CBI.

But they didn't show up @ regionals.

Forgive my inadeptness, but is there some way to check Dwight's list to see who's going where? I couldn't find the way. Nothing important, I was just curious to see who's coming to the University of Florida next year (and for that matter, I'm vaguely curious to see who's going elsewhere, in addition to those who've posted in this thread). From Doug's post, it looks like we'll (UF'll) have another strong first-year group.

--Raj Dhuwalia, UF

banananut wrote:
Hey Jason-Does Harding really have quiz bowl? I'll be there in the fall! Maybe we'll be on the same team-if I decide to play. : )

Harding's team will be resurrected from the quizbowl dead by fall. Besides myself, I know that David Ashley (he was on AR Panasonic last year) will play. Hopefully you'll join us... should be a lot of fun.[/quote]

I applied to Stanford, MIT, Carnegie Mellon, Olin College of Engineering, Georgia Tech, Rose Hulman, Harvey Mudd, Rice, Washington University in St. Louis, University of Florida, and Caltech.

So far, I've been rejected by MIT and Olin and accepted by Carnegie Mellon, Georgia Tech, Rose Hulman, Wash U, and Florida.

Hey Raj, does a player have to be insanely good to make Florida's A team? It seems there is about a 50% chance of me going to Florida at the moment, and if I do go, I'd definitely like to keep playing. Anyway, I hear Florida has one of the best teams in the country. I'm pretty good, but I'm not star. So would I be on the F team or something? That would be fine with me, but I was just wondering.

I asked Raj just about the same question in an email about a week ago. This is what he told me about being able to play.

"Of the Div I players we have now, we're losing Nodya, John in December, Kevin for at least the fall, and ... beyond that I'm not sure. We've had some who haven't shown up in a long time either. The year after that we'll lose Dan, Kevin, and probably a lot of the group we still refer to as the "sophomores" -- Swick, Kelly, Irena, Ajay, etc. Anyway, we'll be going to a lot of tournaments next year, so if you can make it to some practices, you'll have a pretty good selection to choose from. And not everyone goes to every tournament, so we usually have spots available. As an extreme case, at the Sun-n-Fun tournament on the 13th, of our 2 Div I teams, I played solo and our B team had 2 players, so certainly there are plenty of opportunities to play if you want a spot."

Also, there are practices on Tuesday and Wednesday nights, i hear the Tuesday nights are for the less experienced players. One more note, Kelli, Zach, and myself will be in possession of our own buzzer systems and plenty of questions so we can have informal practices whenever we want. I'm sure you'll have a good time next year if you go to UF and decide to play.

In reply to Shai, it depends on the tournament. The true UF A team, the one we'd use for something like the NAQT ICT, is pretty tough to crack. We're missing one of the usual four (Dan) because he's in Vienna, but we'll probably still have our team of 4 grad students (me, Comer, Nordby, and Zahnen) for the 2005 ICT. Suffice it to say that of the four, I'm the newest one to ACF/NAQT tournaments. Comer and Nordby should graduate in 2005, me theoretically in 2006, and Zahnen by 2038 or so. But as Mike Sorice mentioned in some other thread, the college game, especially Div I, is a whole other level of play, and it tends to take a while for new players to be competitive at that level.

But for most tournaments, the lineups are much more flexible. This year we've mostly had the freshmen play together because we're trying to establish a strong core, but in general anyone might end up on the A or B team. I'm kind of a buzzerhog, so I haven't had any freshmen on my teams this year simply because they wouldn't have that much to do. Also, nearly every tournament we attend is either (A) a novice tournament or (B) an invitational with a Div II, so you might end up on the top Div II team. (It depends on areas of strength too, of course -- for instance, a good lit player might end up with our top Div II team simply because it's not covered well.)

UF has a fairly deep program -- not quite as deep as Berkeley, Michigan, and Chicago, I'm guessing, but not far behind -- but as I mentioned to Doug, we generally have spots for any participating member who wants to go, and next year we'll be attending just about every tournament within 500 miles. Next year we'll have a very deep Div II, with a good core of 2003-04 freshmen combined with a strong incoming group, so we'd have some good teammates for you. Just wish we could have gotten Joe Galea to play, or we'd have an even stronger Div II.

So that's the essence of it -- hope I did in fact answer the question. If you need more info, e-mail me at rdhuwalia at hotmail.com. Also, for the 99% of you who aren't going to UF but have read this far for some reason, I suspect you'll have a similar situation at most major college programs. It's very unlikely that you'll make the (true) A team as a freshman for a top-10 college team, but there tend to be a number of tournaments throughout the year where you might make the A or B team.

To Shai specifically, good luck with the applications, and if you choose UF, I hope to see you in the fall (or summer). I don't know about Rose Hulman or CMU, but GT, WUSTL, and Caltech all have active qb programs. I'm guessing from the list that you're doing something engineering-related, so ... well, have fun with the Fourier transforms.

--Raj Dhuwalia, UF

P.S. As an added note, if you (the general audience) want to improve your chances of making an A or B team, it might be good to find out what weaknesses the current players at the school have. Many good teams lack a strong science player, for instance. Or in our case, we're losing our best Div II lit player, and lit isn't a specialty for the incoming MC players. You get the general idea.

Hydrant- Williams has a team, but they don't go to many tournaments; I imagine it's hard being in the middle of (college-wise, at least) nowhere.

Shai- CMU has a fairly active team (with a couple very good young players). Rose-Hulman apparently does CBI once a year, but I've never heard of them playing on the circuit.

Dwight- I know this has been asked before, but is there a way to see this year's list yet?

Raj is absolutely right- getting to know the subjects your team is weak in is the surest ticket to getting lots of playing time in college. It's harder to be a generalist, since each subject is asked about considerably more in depth; if you can know one or two subjects and know them well, you'll be a valuable addition to the team at whatever school you go to. (For instance, we're especially in need of social sciences and physics. And that's not counting upcoming graduations.)

And, just to close this out with a shameless plug for my own school: if any of you want to know more about the program at Swarthmore, feel free to email me at [email protected].

-Chris

Chris -- I forwarded what I have so far to schools that have had hits last night. It should be in your (and several other people's inboxes). Obviously, more hits are needed (I'm barely around 50 right now, but the list only really takes off in May.)

Shai -- CMU definitely has a team, otherwise I've been hallucinating for years. Practice every Wednesday evening. Either ding me, or ding the EFContact list when you decide.