Offseason Studying?

[EnviroBen13]

I want to seperate myself from the who's-who of JV and a guy who is a replacement for players who can't attend tournaments and into a solid varsity contributor. I come to the forums today to ask, how do you guys study in the offseason? I want to keep myself at least in pretty good shape, if not improving, and studying is, of course, the only way to go about that. Thanks in advance folks.

[Somewhere in the Stratosphere]

I want to seperate myself from the who's-who of JV and a guy who is a replacement for players who can't attend tournaments and into a solid varsity contributor. I come to the forums today to ask, how do you guys study in the offseason? I want to keep myself at least in pretty good shape, if not improving, and studying is, of course, the only way to go about that. Thanks in advance folks.

I just want to preface this post by saying that most players in strong programs presumably had their starts on B/C teams (or "JV," as your program calls it), and having players in your program that are better (and presumably older) than you doesn't make you an anonymous face in the crowd of your program (or "the who's-who of JV").

That being said, note the players who are graduating on your school's varsity team and what subjects they specialize in. If you haven't dedicated yourself to a subject yet, expand your depth of knowledge in a category of need for that team next year. As for how you go about studying? This is an infuriating answer, I know, but it really comes to personal preference. Flashcarding helps, but that's mostly for binary association purposes. For more depth of knowledge, read further into topics you are studying. Take notes. Play QBReader and write questions. Make yourself more comfortable with each answerline of interest. Frequency lists are your best friends for learning surface level information in a category.

Hope this helps!

[quizbowlchamp1]

Pick your favorite category (like lit or FA or sci, not some bs like 19th c. Bolivian architects) and devote your off-season to locking down that category. If I were you, I'd pick one of the "big 3" (sci, lit, or hist) and just grind that. Any study method works. I personally cluemine the QBReader Database by making Anki cards (PM me for details) but really anything works. Your goal by next year's 1st tournament should be the ability to consistently power every question on IS-A / novice sets,have a ~75% power rate on IS, Regs, or Regs+, and have ~60% power rate on HSNCT / PACE NSC. Again, just in your category. Hope this helps!

[quizbowlcaptain]

I want to seperate myself from the who's-who of JV and a guy who is a replacement for players who can't attend tournaments and into a solid varsity contributor. I come to the forums today to ask, how do you guys study in the offseason? I want to keep myself at least in pretty good shape, if not improving, and studying is, of course, the only way to go about that. Thanks in advance folks.

I just want to preface this post by saying that most players in strong programs presumably had their starts on B/C teams (or "JV," as your program calls it), and having players in your program that are better (and presumably older) than you doesn't make you an anonymous face in the crowd of your program (or "the who's-who of JV").

That being said, note the players who are graduating on your school's varsity team and what subjects they specialize in. If you haven't dedicated yourself to a subject yet, expand your depth of knowledge in a category of need for that team next year. As for how you go about studying? This is an infuriating answer, I know, but it really comes to personal preference. Flashcarding helps, but that's mostly for binary association purposes. For more depth of knowledge, read further into topics you are studying. Take notes. Play QBReader and write questions. Make yourself more comfortable with each answerline of interest. Frequency lists are your best friends for learning surface level information in a category.

Hope this helps!

I'm going to build off of what Michael said. Try to get good at one specific subject, something your team is already good at. For example, my team is not that great at science, so I try to be the best Sci player can. Carding (making flashcards) is a great way to study, but what I recommend is build a database first. Do this by carding the QBReader frequency lists first. I'll use lit as an example. For "main categories" (American, British, Classical, Euro, World, Other) set your frequency list to High School, 100, All questions. For "subcategories" (Drama, Long Fiction, Poetry, Short Fiction, Misc lit.) do the same instead only do 75 instead of 100. When studying, take the result, I'll use Franz Kafka as an example, and plug it in to the QBReader database. Card all clues that come up, toss-ups and bonuses, but don't card duplicates. Hope this helps and please DM me if you have any questions. Happy Quizbowling!

[joshxu]

Pick your favorite category (like lit or FA or sci, not some bs like 19th c. Bolivian architects) and devote your off-season to locking down that category. If I were you, I'd pick one of the "big 3" (sci, lit, or hist) and just grind that. Any study method works. I personally cluemine the QBReader Database by making Anki cards (PM me for details) but really anything works. Your goal by next year's 1st tournament should be the ability to consistently power every question on IS-A / novice sets,have a ~75% power rate on IS, Regs, or Regs+, and have ~60% power rate on HSNCT / PACE NSC. Again, just in your category. Hope this helps!

This is generally a good method for becoming a lockdown specialist in an individual category, but I'd significantly lower the target power rates. Powering on single-player or even multi-player QBReader is a whole different game than powering in an actual quiz bowl game. A 60% power rate in a big-three category at nationals would mean you're averaging nearly 2.5 powers per game just off of one category alone, which is a threshold very few players can meet. Only 19 players averaged 2.5 powers per game in the 2024 HSNCT prelims, and surely way fewer than 19 did that exclusively off of one category. Serious respect though to anyone who goes from JV to elite nationals-level specialist in a year!

I might also introduce a new perspective, and suggest trying to become a better generalist who's able to answer questions in every category (or almost every category) before the end. Especially at harder difficulties, when there are fewer powers and more dead tossups, buzzes in the range of after power but before "For 10 points" are incredibly critical for winning games. And in those situations where the only two players in the room who can get a tossup at the end are you and an opposing player, you want to have just that extra piece of knowledge to buzz first, even if it's the difference between buzzing on the second-to-last word instead of the last word.

[Stinkweed Imp]

Pick your favorite category (like lit or FA or sci, not some bs like 19th c. Bolivian architects) and devote your off-season to locking down that category. If I were you, I'd pick one of the "big 3" (sci, lit, or hist) and just grind that. Any study method works. I personally cluemine the QBReader Database by making Anki cards (PM me for details) but really anything works. Your goal by next year's 1st tournament should be the ability to consistently power every question on IS-A / novice sets,have a ~75% power rate on IS, Regs, or Regs+, and have ~60% power rate on HSNCT / PACE NSC. Again, just in your category. Hope this helps!

I agree with Josh that power rate is a poor metric of progress. It's also highly variable between tournaments and encourages playing for powers, a bad habit that is often counterproductive. PPB is a far more effective measurement as bonuses make up the majority of your points and often require more comprehensive knowledge. The importance of bonuses also means that I would recommend trying to branch out and learn more than one category, especially if there are categories you know your team isn't going to have much coverage in. It doesn't take much studying to turn 0s into 10s or 20s (compared to trying to power every tossup), and those points make at least as much of a difference in close games.

[a_noob_bot]

Just a couple thoughts here:

1. Expecting to power every question on novice/IS-A is honestly an unacheivable goal. There's always going to be some content that you haven't heard before, and that's the fun of quizbowl! Be open to learning new things and don't expect to power everything.

2. Power percentage shouldn't be your own goal. My ideal team on HSNCT-diff and above would be everyone going 1/2/1 or better. Think about the ways that you can help your team the most by putting clutch buzzes in. Personally, my favorite buzz this year was me 10ing a bio tossup in the state finals that pretty much locked the game. It was one of those buzzes where I buzzed early in the giveaway like Josh talks about.

3. Don't study to fill holes, study to learn what you want to learn. I know this sounds really bad coming from me, a person who picked up FA to plug a hole and have come to really enjoy it, but I think that you should learn what you want to. Don't feel pressured to study just to study the things that your team needs. I know that my teammates appreciate that they can fall back on me to give them at least 3 good buzzes each game. I think that each teammate should have that expectation for each other, and you should think about how you can confidently buzz 3 times each game.

[Somewhere in the Stratosphere]

Pick your favorite category (like lit or FA or sci, not some bs like 19th c. Bolivian architects) and devote your off-season to locking down that category. If I were you, I'd pick one of the "big 3" (sci, lit, or hist) and just grind that. Any study method works. I personally cluemine the QBReader Database by making Anki cards (PM me for details) but really anything works. Your goal by next year's 1st tournament should be the ability to consistently power every question on IS-A / novice sets,have a ~75% power rate on IS, Regs, or Regs+, and have ~60% power rate on HSNCT / PACE NSC. Again, just in your category. Hope this helps!

I agree with Josh that power rate is a poor metric of progress. It's also highly variable between tournaments and encourages playing for powers, a bad habit that is often counterproductive. PPB is a far more effective measurement as bonuses make up the majority of your points and often require more comprehensive knowledge. The importance of bonuses also means that I would recommend trying to branch out and learn more than one category, especially if there are categories you know your team isn't going to have much coverage in. It doesn't take much studying to turn 0s into 10s or 20s (compared to trying to power every tossup), and those points make at least as much of a difference in close games.

Never played an NAQT format game but yeah, improving PPB from 10 or so to 15-17 will give you probably an extra 50-70 points per game, as opposed to improving P% which definitely won't give you 70 extra points per game

[quizbowlchamp1]

Apologies for my earlier post. I do agree that you should be trying to improve your PPB, as this will help you gain more points. However, I don't think P% is a useless stat. Improving your P% will significantly help you, especially without bouncebacks. If you have a very good P% and decent PPB, then the other team will never be able to get to the bonus. Try, if you can, to work on BOTH.

3. Don't study to fill holes, study to learn what you want to learn.

I 100% agree with this. If your team doesn't have a sci player, don't feel obligated to study sci if you don't want to. Quiz Bowl is a GAME so HAVE FUN. The whole reason we do this is because we GENUINELY ENJOY IT. Don't make Quizbowl into a chore (unless you truly are obsessed with it and WANT to study).

[Santa Claus]

Here's a guide I wrote: How to study.

I will briefly quote myself:

If you just want the two-step guide to success, here it is:

1. Read through older sets and past questions to familiarize yourself with the game and with what it expects you to know about various topics
2. Establish a routine that includes taking down new information and retaining things