This season, three policy tweaks are reshaping Science Olympiad at Townsend Harris High School: competitors will now be required to have three total hours of study sessions per week instead of three separate studying days, competitors with more events won’t need to complete as many practice tests per event, and Team C will join the rest of the team to compete in Regionals. According to Science Olympiad leaders, the goal of these changes are to retain a strong sense of camaraderie and reduce burnout while still keeping preparation rigorous.

In regards to the first change, SciOly president and junior Ashley Brachman said, “We were thinking together as a board that the three day study session was a little bit unnecessary. We thought, ‘why not just have a minimum of three hours?’ That way, people can stay committed to SciOly, and it’s less of an unnecessary burden.”

She said that the team wants members to prepare enough to compete well while not feeling drained: “As a team, it’s not just about winning […] we want to make sure that our team members are not burnt out.”

Vice President and junior Lanah Lee said the new study-session policy was an improvement towards fairness. Requiring team members to go to study sessions three days a week for an hour each day, she said, “punished students whose commitments were spread across many short blocks of time.”

Tracking hours makes participation more accessible to athletes and students with part-time jobs or family responsibilities, the leaders say. “It does not lower standards,” Lanah said. “Team placement will still reflect in-house performance, attendance, and overall commitment. We’re just using a fairer, more inclusive measure of that commitment.”

A study session will still follow the same routine of taking practice tests, working on devices for build events, which require competitors to make devices like small helicopters, and lastly members will still log their practice tests and resources.

Science Olympiad Head Coach and Chemistry teacher Olivia Comer said under the old rule, students often sacrificed other activities for Science Olympiad. Now, “you might be able to stay for just two hours at a time instead of for three days.”

Junior Anish Sugrim said, “This new three hour model is much better personally for going into junior year, which is notorious for being a very busy year. This gives me much more time to do things other than SciOly while still fulfilling my requirements for the team.”

As for the second policy change, Ms. Comer said, “In general during the team creation, the coaches try to keep it fairly balanced in the number of events that people are taking. I think some years, some people had very few, and then some people had five [events]. We are trying to minimize some of the load by reducing the number of tests that are necessary.”

Ms. Comer also said that this change simply provides a baseline, “so, if a student does feel unprepared with the amount of tests they’ve done, they can continue to do more.”

Sophomore Vivienne Chen said that the new requirements allow her to have a more flexible schedule: “Some days I’m really busy, and on others, I have a lot of free time… [Now] I can spend time on study sessions instead of asking, ‘How am I going to go to three study sessions when I only have two free days this week?’”

In regards to the third policy change, Ashley and Lanah said that both the coaches and the board decided to increase Team C’s participation “this year because over 100 people took an in-house, [the entry placement exam for SciOly].”

They also said that they believe a big part of Science Olympiad is the exposure students get from regionals. Previously, Team C did not compete in regionals and wasn’t able to fully experience the full Science Olympiad experience. Ashley and Lanah said increasing Team C’s participation “would allow [more] students to gain hands-on experience within a competitive context. Long term, by expanding competitive opportunity, it will have a positive impact on the entire academic team.”