When you start a new chapter of life (for example, college), there are some things from your previous chapter (read, high school) that you leave behind. But there are some things that you take with you. 

One of the activities that I enjoyed in high school that I continued at Caltech is Science Olympiad (colloquially called SciOly, “sci-OH-ly”, not “sci-AW-ly”). I love SciOly in middle and high school, long evenings with my teammates going down Wikipedia rabbit-hole on galaxy formation, food-borne illnesses, and the integumentary system (just to name a few!) Studying niche topics through SciOly first introduced me to the joy of learning all different albeit from a new position – an organizer and volunteer! The Caltech campus hosts the Southern California State Science Olympiad Tournament which is completely organized by a contingent of students, alumni, and volunteers from across the Southern California region. For the last two years as President of the Caltech Science Olympiad Planning Team, I’ve had the opportunity to make it happen!

Tournament Prep

While preparation for the April 2025 State tournament actually started way back in the summer of 2024, most of the planning and organization happens from February till the night before the tournaments as we raise money, reserve rooms, write tests, and organize volunteers in the lead up to the big day. 

Typically, the state tournament happens the first week of spring tournament, but this year it was the second weekend. This meant we had one full extra week of prep. For those who have never competed in SciOly, some of the chemistry and inquiry events require materials for each of the participants. For example, Forensics in its eternal wisdom, decided to require 12 different powders and fibers to be individually packed into plastic cups. Now I’d never scooped calcium carbonate into 31 individual cups, but I tell you we got very good very fast. As the host campus, we had ~4 nights of “packing parties”, where the Caltech Planning Team descended upon the Avery Dining Hall to pack materials ranging from salt, vinegar, and sodium acetate to pieces of pipecleaner and 27 different shades of small plastic beads!

The Tournament Day

Caltech is a small campus so on the day of the tournament, over 1000 middle and high school students descend upon the campus (along with their parents) and the campus is buzzing with energy and excitement.  As an organizer, I arrived bright and early at 6:15am to our volunteer headquarters and before I knew it, the over 120 volunteers began arriving, checking in, and picking up the materials for each of the events they were in charge of. 

This year, Science Olympiad was fortunate to use the new Resnick Sustainability Center’s (pictured above) labs and lecture spaces for many of the chemistry events.

Lab Tours

One part of the State tournament, I’m especially proud of is that for the second year, the State tournament included lab tours for student competitors. Last year, we had the idea that while competing in Science Olympiad is a great learning experience, it would be especially exciting for the student competitors to see science happening in Caltech labs for themself! We started advertising and looking for volunteers in February and had graduate students, postdocs, and faculty members from 21 labs across multiple divisions give tours of their labs to the middle and high school students. Over 450 students from 28 different Southern California schools went on lab tours! From geology labs to aerospace robotics labs, students had the opportunity to see a research lab first hand and ask questions to the scientists.

Award Ceremony

SciOly award ceremonies are notorious for starting very, very late as every single test and event must be graded, audited, and imputed into the scoring system in the very short time frame, typically less than 2 hours, between the end of the events that the students compete in and the start of the award ceremony.

This means a lot of stress.

Last year, in the critical 30 minutes before the scheduled start of the award ceremony, all of campus internet went down. Panicking, we had to run between Beckman Auditorium and our headquarters to physically shuttle a flash drive with the slides presenting the award. Now this induced a lot of stress and very panicked phone calls last year.

So this year I was especially nervous leading up to the award ceremony. We worked with campus IT to set up an additional wifi for SciOly and I prayed to the internet gods that they would have mercy upon us.

Moreover, we were extremely lucky to have a lot of very talented and hardworking volunteers grading the events (and the internet gods smiled favorably upon us). 

A Special Guest: Rep. Judy Chu (CA-28)

This year’s awards ceremony had a special speaker, Congresswoman Judy Chu (CA-28), who represents the greater Pasadena area in the United States House of Representatives, in addition to Caltech’s Provost, Dr. David Tirrell who welcomed participants to campus. As a local student, it was especially exciting to meet Congresswoman Chu and have her speak to the students. Congresswoman Chu encouraged students to continue pursuing the sciences while reflecting on the impact they can make on society. We were also very grateful for Caltech, the Caltech Science Olympiad Planning Team, and Southern California Science Olympiad each to be presented a Certificate of Congressional Recognition to Caltech for creating opportunities for students to explore the sciences.

With no surprises, Sierra Vista Middle School and Troy High School took 1st place in the middle and high school divisions, respectively, and will be representing Southern California at the National Science Olympiad tournament at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln on May 23-24, 2025.

Science Olympiad has been something that’s been part of my life since middle school.