WORLD SCHOLARS’ CUP

About

The World Scholar’s Cup (abbreviated as WSC) is an international team academic program with students participating from over 50 countries. The competition was founded by DemiDec, in particular by Daniel Berdichevsky, DemiDec‘s president, in 2006. The World Scholar’s Cup has attracted what it calls “a global community of future scholars and leaders”, and promotes that it allows participants to “discover strengths and skills you never knew you had.” It focuses on bringing students from different cultures together to discuss issues and ideas relevant to today and the future.

This year for the global round at Athens, there were a total of 41 countries, hence making it a total of 800 participants out of which 120 managed to qualify for the TOURNAMENT OF CHAMPIONS AT THE YALE UNIVERSITY.

Tournament Format

A team for the World Scholar’s Cup is composed of three students. The teams are usually made up of students from the same school, but mixed teams are allowed. Students have the option of forming “independent” teams that may include students from other schools or even other countries. Each team participates in the four standard, round events.

Teams may participate in any regional round. If teams are unable to attend a regional round, but would still like to participate in the Global Round, they may qualify for a wildcard berth.

To qualify for the annual Global Round, teams must do one of the following:

• Exceed a point threshold at a Regional Round (which varies per round but is usually 20,000)
• Earn a wildcard “at-large” berth at a Regional Round (through strong point performance)
• Apply for an exceptional berth (granted only in extraordinary circumstances)

To qualify to the Tournament of Champions at Yale University, teams must:

• Exceed a point threshold at a Global Round or Mini-Global Round

There are both senior and junior divisions in the competition. A student’s age designates which division they may participate in. Students that are below age 14 participate in the junior division, while students 15 and older participate in the senior division.

Events

Each World Scholar’s Cup Regional Round consists of four main events: the Scholar’s Challenge, Collaborative Writing, The Team Debate, and the Scholar’s Bowl. In addition to these four main events, at select tournaments additional activities take place.

The Scholar’s Challenge

The Scholar’s Challenge is a multiple choice exam given to each individual competitor to complete within 60 minutes. For both the junior and the senior division there are 120 questions. The prizes are awarded for each subject as well as for the entire Challenge, for teams and for individuals.

Collaborative Writing

Collaborative Writing is based on an argumentative structure, with students picking one of six different prompts. Each scholar on a team must pick a different prompt. Scholars pick one side of a topic and write in favor of it or against it, with the goal to persuade readers to agree with their views. Students are expected to provide evidence to support their claims using any resources available to them (including the internet), with the exception of social networking sites and communicating with people other than their teammates during the exam.

At the beginning of the event, students have 25 minutes to work with their teammates to discuss and research their arguments. Following the collaboration period, students have 45 minutes to write their essay. There is no word minimum or maximum, and students are expected to cite sources. Following the writing period, students then have 15 minutes to collaborate again with their teammates to copy edit one another’s work, but they may not finish a teammate’s essay.

Team Debate

The Team Debate focuses on encouraging students to develop their speaking and logic skills, as well as teamwork, to argue orally for or against a topic pertaining to the curriculum. The Team Debate is a very important event in the World Scholar’s Cup, because it focuses on coming together as a community to discuss intellectual topics. The format is a straightforward one, designed specifically to be accessible to all levels of debaters.

The Scholar’s Bowl

The Scholar’s Bowl is a team event usually held in a theater. Team members work together to answer multiple choice questions that are displayed on a large screen.

In order to answer the questions, each team of students is given a “clicker” that connects to a scoring computer on stage. Students then choose their answer by pressing A, B, C, D, or E on their clicker. Once the question has been read aloud by the bowl master (usually Alpaca-In-Chief Daniel Berdichevsky), students are given 15–30 seconds, depending on the difficulty of the question, to submit their answer. The questions gets harder each time and worth more points than the last one. There are sometimes rapid fire questions which have to be answered in 3 seconds (5 such questions will be present and each question will usually carry 1000 points).

Achievements

REGIONAL ROUND

Our girls took part in the regional round held at the Suncity School in Gurgaon. Wherein we received a total of 66 medals for both team and individual events.

GLOBAL ROUND

SHIVRANJINI KUMARI

SILVER-TEAM RANK 18 IN SOUTH ASIA

SILVER-TOP 100 TEAMS TO YALE

SILVER-Team Debate

SILVER-Team Collaborative Writing

SILVER-Team Scholars’ Bowl

GOLD-Individual for Literature

SILVER-Individual for Collaborative writing

SILVER-Individual Debate

 

JIYAA SALUJA

SILVER-TEAM RANK 18 IN SOUTH ASIA

SILVER-Team Debate

SILVER-Team Collaborative Writing

SILVER-Team Scholars’ Bowl

SILVER-Individual for Collaborative writing

SILVER-Individual Debate

 

TANVI MODI

SILVER-TEAM RANK 18 IN SOUTH ASIA

SILVER-TOP 100 TEAMS TO YALE

SILVER-Team Debate

SILVER-Team Collaborative Writing

SILVER-Team Scholars’ Bowl

SILVER-Individual for Literature

PAAVNI AGARWAL

GOLD-Team Debate (RANKED IN TOP 35)

GOLD-Team Collaborative Writing (RANKED IN TOP 35)

SILVER-Individual for Collaborative writing

SILVER-Individual for Social Studies

 

HARSHINI KUMARI

GOLD-Team Debate (RANKED IN TOP 35)

GOLD-Team Collaborative Writing (RANKED IN TOP 35)

SILVER- Individual Debate

SILVER-Individual for Social Studies

SILVER-Individual for Collaborative writing

RADHIKA PUROHIT

GOLD-Team Debate (RANKED IN TOP 35)

GOLD-Team Collaborative Writing (RANKED IN TOP 35)

GOLD-Individual for Debate(RANKED IN TOP 20)

GOLD-For Being the School Scholar

MEENAKSHI KOTHARI

SILVER-Team Collaborative Writing

SILVER-Team Scholars’ Bowl

SILVER-Team Debate

SILVER-Individual for Collaborative writing

AANYA BHANDARI

SILVER-Team Collaborative Writing

SILVER-Team Scholars’ Bowl

SILVER-Team Debate

SILVER- Individual Debate

SILVER-Individual for Collaborative writing

VANDINI DHOKA

SILVER-Team Collaborative Writing

SILVER-Team Scholars’ Bowl

SILVER-Team Debate