IAAC Gold & National Award

Description

The International Astronomy and Astrophysics Competition gives you the unique opportunity to show your knowledge and astronomy skills! The IAAC is an online astronomy competition for students from all countries.

Experience

Preliminary Round

This round consists of five problems. There wasn't anything particularly interesting about them because they weren't very difficult, likely around the OSK-OSP difficulty level. I completed this part well.

Pre-Final Round

This round also consists of three problems. While they weren't harder than the previous round, they required more effort due to the many subproblems. Similar to before, this round wasn't particularly interesting, and I managed to do well.

Final Round

I can't remember if this part or the previous one required a $5 fee to continue. Nonetheless, the final round was disappointing. I expected the problems to be of OSN-level difficulty, but most were multiple-choice questions focusing on astronomy fun facts and memorization (OSK-level difficulty). I was quite disappointed with the competition. Isn't it ironic that the previous rounds were actually harder than the final round? Despite this, I received a gold reward and a national award, the highest from my country.

Reflection

From this competition, I learned that even a competition with the word "International" in its name does not necessarily matter. What truly matters is the actual competitiveness and the difficulty of the problems within the competition itself.