Academic Decathlon is comprised of 10 competition events:
Objective Events
Each of the seven objective events is a 30 minute, 50 question multiple choice test based on the USAD Resource Guide for the year's curriculum.
Art - tested over art pieces, art fundamentals and art history
Music - tested over music selections, fundamentals, and history
Social Studies - tested over the history of the topic and its relation to human interaction
Science - tested over a scientific branch as it relates to the topic
Math - (35 questions) tested over foundations of math that dive deeper into trigonometry, geometry, statistics, algebra and calculus
Economics - test over foundations and how economics relates to the topic
Literature - tested over a novel and short literary selections as they relate to the topic, as well as literary criticism and historical significance
Subjective Events
Essay - written response to one of three prompts about information covered in the USAD curriculum resource guide (50 minutes)
Speech + Impromptu - prepared speech over a topic of your choosing (3.5-4 minutes)
Interview - personal interview with two or three judges (5-8 minutes)
Scoring
Each event is worth 1,000 points with the highest possible score being a 10,000.
Each team can have up to 3 members in each of the following categories:
Honors (3.80-4.0 GPA)
Scholastic (3.20-3.79 GPA)
Varsity (2.0-3.19 GPA)
The top two scores from each category will add together to make the team score for a maximum of 60,000 points
The top teams in state historically average about 50,000-52,000 points to win state.