Reflection On My USABO Journey: Failures and Lessons Learned (IMO, THIS IS VALUABLE LIFE ADVICE)
This article is about how USABO affected my mindset towards college and my whole college application journey. I learned how to deal with failure, and got a pretty nice personal statement out of it. I hope this is helpful in dealing with how you did on USABO, whether you feel like you crushed it (slay!) or like it crushed you (tl;dr - you’ll be ok, and will still get into a college you love, but only if you are ready to think differently. This article is especially for you.)
Before I begin, I’d like to point out that the information contained in this series of articles is pretty personal. I’m explaining my journey in-detail in hopes that someone can relate and benefit from hearing about my experiences and perspective. Don’t do anything stupid.
Okay. I’m going to start in 8th grade, when COVID hit and USABO prep began. (No, you don’t have to start this early if you want to camp, I’m just under weird circumstances.) I took AP Biology in 7th grade, so I thought USABO would be a piece of cake. Then I saw a Hill plot. Then I saw different chromatography techniques. And I was like, “wth is this???”
So I sweated through 8th and 9th grade, and took the USABO in 9th grade. Didn’t even pass the first test, although I think I was about 4-5 points from cutoff? Don’t really remember tbh. I think my main weakness freshman year was 1) not having AP Chemistry and AP Statistics under my belt (so I couldn’t understand Michaelis-Menten, Henderson-Hasselbalch, amino acid properties, pKa, chi-square, etc), and 2) a lack of passion and innate drive. To be successful at USABO, in my opinion, you don’t necessarily need to have a massive innate passion for biology, although that can help. I believe you just need a lust for winning. (I’m not truly qualified to say this because I didn’t camp, but this is just my opinion). Freshman year, I had neither.
Sophomore year was where things began to take shape, although I still didn’t pass the Open Exam (I was a similar distance from the cutoff as freshman year). I took AP Chemistry, AP Statistics, and some community college courses (Principles of Cellular & Molecular Biology - highly recommend, very helpful; Human Anatomy; General College Chemistry I). These five courses set me up for success the following year.
Junior year was when I joined BODS and started to take things seriously. I know it’s not that deep, but back then, finding BODS transformed my view of USABO. Through talking to other students passionate about biology, I started to see that the grind was exhilarating. I began to realize the value of taking things to a very deep level. I enjoyed the pride I felt as I studied, knowing that I was working towards being one of the brightest biology students in the nation.
I read Campbell with renewed interest in junior year. It was my third reading, and I realized so much about the value of the book. Before, I had skimmed it, thinking that broad concepts were the only important things in Campbell. Junior year, I worked on learning more about every single little thing I found in Campbell. For example, in the plants chapters, there is one mention of self-incompatibility. I predicted that this kind of topic would lead to some very interesting genetics problems in USABO. Using Satish Petkar’s 1500 Genetics Problems book, I learned more about this topic. Sure enough, it showed up in past USABO exams.
It also showed up on the 2023 ARBC Online Qualifier Individual Exam. This competition was my first serious biology competition. I won. That’s when I realized Camp wasn’t completely out of my reach. If I worked harder, it was possible. I started grinding like crazy. I quit everything. I thought about the cost of putting all my eggs in one basket for college applications, and thought, “screw college apps.” For the rest of junior year, USABO was all I did. I got the highest Open Exam score in my school.
But I walked out of the Semifinal testing room in tears. I knew I didn’t do well at all. I had to skip most of the test because I’d portioned my time poorly. A month later, I got my score back and started crying immediately. I went to bed in tears, and couldn’t stop sobbing until two in the morning (back then, my sleep time was like 10:30pm). I woke up, for the first time in my life, with a headache and very puffy eyes.
This is all very dramatic, but this is exactly how it happened. Top 125 isn’t bad at all. But for me, it was a failure: my goal was Top 20.
At this point I did some introspection and realized the following:
The emotional connection I had with USABO was unhealthy. I needed to be more objective about the way I do things. Too much passion kills.
Most of the reason I wanted to camp so badly was because I wanted to make friends with USABO nerds. There are other ways to do this.
I now had a great personal statement topic.
The rest of my college application was, however, screwed.
More on #1 - If you feel like you failed semis this year, I want you to read this part carefully. Be passionate about USABO, but don’t let its result define your self-worth. I made that mistake. For anything you do, no matter how much you love it, this concept applies. Many say not to make your passion your career; this only applies to those who don’t know how to detach themselves appropriately. By “detachment,” I mean that you shouldn’t expect results from your work. Think about this quote:
“Life is harder when you expect a lot of the world and little of yourself.
Life is easier when you expect a lot of yourself and little of the world.
High standards, low expectations.”
Have a high standard for the knowledge you gain and the studying you do. Don’t expect the universe to align such that the USABO test writers write a test you’ll perform well on.
More on #2-4 - To connect with USABO people, I applied for the Content Committees in IBB and ARBC. This was a cohesive element of the USABO story I told in my personal statement.
And eventually, I got into some decent colleges. I’m very happy. For you to be happy, regardless of any results you get, you again need to remember that your standards (for the excellence you reach) should be high, but your expectations (of which college you’ll get into) should be nonexistent. This is way easier said than done, but I think one key component of this is enjoying the things you have to do every day to achieve your goal rather than fantasizing about the end result you’re hoping for.
In my personal experience, every time I idolized a result, I failed. I idolized Camp and failed. I idolized STS T40 and failed. I thought of qualifying for ISEF as a casual “redemption” after failing to get T40, and I qualified for ISEF. The mindset anyone needs to have for success is: I’m going to do my best to prepare for this, but not going to think much of what comes from this effort.
So yeah hope that was helpful, or at least somewhat consoling. I hope it came off the way I intended for it to, and I hope this article guides your thoughts in a positive direction.
