Practice Tournament FAQs

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Registration is open now for every Practice Tournament this season. It closes one day before the tournament ends, at the end of Tuesday.

Yes. The price per subject is one level $30, two levels $40, all three levels $50. If you register for one level and later want more, even after you have finished the first, register again: it charges $10 for one additional level for that subject, or $20 for two.

The discount is for signing up for more than one difficulty level within a subject: one level $30, two levels $40, all three levels $50.

The questions are taken from past IAC tournaments. There are over 100,000 questions in the IAC archive dating back to IAC’s founding in 2010, so there are a lot of questions for us to choose from!

This depends on how quickly a student buzzes on average, but in most cases about 15 to 25 minutes.

Yes. There are different questions for each level. So if you play every level of every subject, that is 810 separate questions (90 questions × 3 subjects × 3 levels) you can play during each Practice Tournament week!

Yes. We use AI to come up with plausible answer choices. For example, if a question finishes by saying “for the point, name this first president of the USA,” you might expect Thomas Jefferson and Ben Franklin as possible (incorrect) answer choices, but not people like Taylor Swift or Pablo Picasso.

We are working on an upgraded version of the Practice Tournaments that will include this option. Expect it by the end of 2026.

Each level of every subject has its own leaderboard. It lists each student’s first name and last initial, grade, school, and state or province (or country, outside the US and Canada).

We will send a certificate to all champion students, but no medals or trophies.

Each Study Guide is sent to the email address on file within a few days of the end of that Practice Tournament week.

We wait to send the guides because what appears in them depends not only on a student’s own buzzes, but on the buzzes of everyone else in their tournament. If they buzz quickly and correctly relative to other students, that question may not appear in their guide. But if they buzz correctly and reasonably quickly, and the average student still outbuzzed them on a question, the guide may give them something from that question to study, usually something near where they buzzed but not immediately before it. This helps them catch up with other students on topics where they are relatively weaker.

The study guides consist of factual statements taken from the questions. In most cases, a fact chosen from a question is either the fact at the end of the question (if the student did not buzz at all), or the fact just before the point where they buzzed correctly. If they buzzed correctly on a particular fact, they presumably know it, or at least had enough information at that point to make an educated estimate. Whatever comes right before it is what they next most need to know about that subject, as far as the question goes.

This individualized approach helps students learn the content of IAC’s tournaments as efficiently as possible, and it is the single most important takeaway from the Practice Tournaments!

Yes, one for each level you play.

The Practice Tournaments are for practice only, and do not qualify a student for IAC’s championships. The questions are past IAC questions, many of which may be available through the links on the Resources page of the IAC websites, or in other ways. There is also no way to watch students during the Practice Tournaments to prevent cheating.

That said, students who cheat at the Practice Tournaments are doing themselves a disservice. It keeps them from practicing buzzing the way they will need to at tournaments, where it is not possible to look up answers mid-question. It also means the personalized study guide made after each tournament will not show what they most need to focus on.

For questions about the online platform and the technical side of the Practice Tournaments, or about QuizVidya in general, email support@quizvidya.com.

For questions about International Academic Competitions, email help@iacompetitions.com.