Against the Idea of High School Science Competitions

We teach students that they shouldn't give into peer pressure, that everyone should be themselves, and that it doesn't really matter where you end up. These principles are all good and true in an ideal world, yet we actively encourage and push students towards the notion that a better school is the key to a better life. The idea that a college determines your trajectory in life is not a fully unsubstantiated claim. Graduates from the top echelon of colleges earn substantially more out-of-college and are substantially more likely to become leaders in government, science, and business. Ivy League graduates are 100 times more likely to become CEOs of Fortune 500 companies (Fortune), and are even more likely to be represented among the tsunami of VPs and other executives that run corporate America. Startup funding is also inextricably linked with brand: See schools like Stanford, MIT, and Wharton who, among others, comprise nearly 20% of all companies funded by Y-Combinator, one of the largest and most famous startup accelerators in the world.

We, as a society, push the idea that graduates of top colleges are infinitely more likely to succeed and that to succeed against the grain construes a sisyphean task. I sympathize with the sentiment that the true impact of a college on its students is not an obligation of the college, but rather an obligation on the student to utilize the opportunities provided to them. However, for high school students entrapped in an evermore college-focused world, it is increasingly difficult to shed the clear advantage that some students will start the rat race of adult life with a clear, distinct advantage, tied intricately to a student's upbringing.

This idea that top colleges are critical to one's future success drives the fervor around college admissions every fall and winter. Some families pay thousands for expensive college consultants, all for the chance for their children to enter the “elite”. In this era of holistic admissions in U.S. higher education, vaguely resembling the inequity of the Gilded Age, competitions offer a supposedly unbiased, “even” playing field where students can showcase their ability to problem solve, conduct research, and study complex undergraduate or even graduate-level topics. Seeing classmates succeed in these competitions encourages a proverbial race-to-the-bottom. Regardless of their interest in the topics being tested, students feel a pressure to engage in these various competitions, seeing them as established necessities for admission to the “illustrious” top 20. Not only is there a perverse drive to pursue these competitions, but these competitions themselves do not effectively execute their true goals.

I argue that even the most “meritocratic” competitions, Olympiads, do not achieve many of their specified goals. These competitions incentivize students to study specific topics that are not truly of interest to them, but rather of interest to the competition. They push the idea that science is simply a competition and not an opportunity for collaboration and mutual support and growth. While pockets of mutually supportive students form, they often serve as echo chambers, emphasizing the notion that “someone is always better than you”. They discriminate against those of lower socioeconomic status, who are simply unable or are not exposed to the idea of these academic competitions. In Biology Olympiad, the amount of time spent studying is directly proportional to your ultimate result. There is no intuition if you do not know the base content. While I agree that this provides, among the pool of competitions, the most even playing field, how can we expect a child who needs to work jobs to support their family to have this time? We're effectively saying that only those who can afford the time ought to be allowed a fair place on the field of battle. And sure, Olympiads don't necessarily claim to be equitable in terms of time. However, then, I turn to the idea of prep courses. How is it fair that 17 out of the 20 US National Chemistry Olympiad finalists took the same prep course, a course that costs several thousand dollars a year. How is it fair that 12/20 of the US Biology Olympiad finalists took a similar prep course. How is it fair that students of higher socioeconomic status, who have likely experienced easier childhoods and easier lives, are essentially afforded yet another proverbial power-up.

This begs the question: How are these competitions doing anything but amplifying the inequities already present in the US public education system?

I do not claim to know how we can replace many of these competitions, like science fairs or olympiads in assessing students' future abilities in STEM. Nor do I believe that systemic change across the entire landscape of higher education is not imperative in the near-future. However, in my experience and in the experience of many others, science competitions in HS not only amplify inequity, but provide a poor standard of what science actually should be. It's not a coincidence that many scientists who are publishing impactful work never competed in competitions like Olympiads or ISEF in high school. We ought to encourage kids to branch out, to use high school as a time to discover what they're interested in, to learn and to grow as human beings. We shouldn't idolize or glorify mindless studying in an isolated room for hours. We shouldn't tell kids that without competitions, you are worthless in the eyes of colleges. Higher education shouldn't tell kids that they, in all their 15 minutes of consideration, can accurately determine the potential of a candidate to succeed. Solving these issues will require large-scale change in how we, as a society, perceive the apparatus of higher education, but I have faith that we'll get there eventually.

In the meantime though, we ought to support our country's young scientists in any way we can, even if this means supporting a system that may be, in my humble opinion, fundamentally broken. John Green writes, “We live in an irreparably broken world, and I don't wish to deny reality — but the amazing thing is that we're right to hold on to hope. The world may be broken, but hope is not crazy”