Few questions on how to study for quizbowl

[adhvaithr7]

I have a few questions about how to study quiz bowl. Right now, I'm not doing so great, and I wanted a few key tips:

1. What is the best way to study for HSNCT, NHBB Nats and other hard high school tournaments? I am having a hard time right now.

2. How do we get more members for the local quiz bowl club at our school during COVID-19?

3. We are running low on funds, so how do we make sure we are not paying from our own pocket?

If you could give me some advice right now, that would be great.

Thanks!

[AGoodMan]

1. What is the best way to study for HSNCT, NHBB Nats and other hard high school tournaments? I am having a hard time right now.

I would do a good amount of packet reading + find some way of collecting and retaining information. Perhaps start at HS regular difficulty (WHAQ, CALI, etc.) and then read through (relatively carefully, both tossups and bonuses!) sets of higher difficulty until you basically feel "uncomfortable" -- as in you're not getting most questions until the end, and/or you're not converting like 3-5 questions per packet. It might feel painful, but look those unfamiliar things up and get familiar with the clues. Some people take notes, some people make flashcards, some people do both, some people write questions on things they've learned, some people can just retain stuff by reading. Whatever works for you, do that. It might not hurt to methodically do this through a few sets. Then move on to higher difficulty (BLAST, HFT, BHSAT, ACF Fall, Prison Bowl, etc.).

Ultimately, to have good success for nationals-level tournaments, you'd have to at least read sets matching that difficulty level (PACE, ILLIAC, 2018 IMSANITY, STASH, etc.) and higher (NASAT, EFT, EMT, MWT, SUN, FST, etc.). Some of these sets may be of uneven difficulty but the net gain from them will almost always be postiive, and will also teach you how question writers might ramp up difficulty on a standard answerline (i.e. tossup a specific character from a core work).

If you care about specific subjects, another good idea might be to select a difficulty level on QuizDB for a specific subject and generate ~50 random questions on it and learn clues from there.

Also, your textbooks could be great sources of clues and buzzes! If you're able to absorb information from textbooks, that could also be very valuable, for example, in the sciences and APUSH.

And lastly, don't be afraid to directly ask people for tips, via DMs and whatnot. The vast majority of the community are communicative and willing to help.

[Stained Diviner]

I am happy to announce that, thanks to a suggestion from Athena Kern, Emily Gunter has recently written a version of her recruiting post for the PACE Quizbowl 101 site. Emily's original post is here. The updated article is at the Student Recruitment link at Quizbowl 101.