Competitions are the best low-stakes way to discover what you enjoy - and you'll often place well at the regional level just by showing up prepared. If your school doesn't have a team, that's your opening: find a teacher and start one.
Start here (team, beginner-friendly)
- Science Olympiad - a 15-person team with 20+ "events" across science and engineering (study, build, and lab events). Great for going deep on topics you like. Use the official site, the student-run wiki, and the forums.
- Science Bowl - fast buzzer trivia, teams of 4, covering physics, chem, bio, earth science, math, and a little CS. You either know it in 5-15 seconds or you don't.
- Quiz Bowl - buzzer trivia across everything: sciences, history, fine arts, and pop culture. Practice on Protobowl / QuizDB.
Subject olympiads (solo, deeper)
- Biology - USABO: a hard 50-minute exam; top scorers advance to semifinals and then a national camp. Read Campbell's, then a cell/molecular and a plant text, then drill past tests.
- Chemistry - USNCO (local → national → study camp). Physics - F=ma → USAPhO.
- Computing - USACO: four contests a year, divisions Bronze → Silver → Gold → Platinum. Learn data structures & algorithms and practice on usaco.guide and Codeforces.
- Astronomy (USAAAO), Earth Science (USESO), Neuroscience (Brain Bee - based on the Brain Facts book).
Math
The ladder is AMC 10/12 → AIME → USA(J)MO. Art of Problem Solving (AoPS) has a free wiki of past problems and forums; its books and classes cost money.
Humanities & beyond
Academic Decathlon (10 events, GPA-based divisions), Speech & Debate, Model UN, the Scholastic Art & Writing Awards, Linguistics (NACLO), robotics (FRC/FTC/VEX), innovation/pitch contests (Conrad, Diamond Challenge), and hackathons.
What students on Reddit say
Advice that keeps coming up on r/ScienceOlympiad and r/math:
- Past papers are the whole game for AMC. The Art of Problem Solving wiki has every past AMC and AIME problem with solutions. Timed past tests beat any textbook.
- Science Olympiad: binders and builds win medals. A well-organized binder for open-note events and a build tested dozens of times are where teams pick up points. Start builds months early.
- Go deep on one or two. Students who place well usually specialize instead of spreading across six contests. Depth also makes a better story for college.
- For USACO, follow the USACO Guide in order. Work the problems in sequence and read the editorial after 30 to 60 minutes stuck. That's how most people climb from Bronze to Gold.
Ready to go deeper than contests? See Do real research in high school and Land summer research / REUs.
Distilled from crowdsourced student guides - verify current rules and dates.