Rules

At HighFour Competitions, there are two main user categories: teachers and students.

TEACHERS

• Teachers whose schools have already signed up may create their own accounts here. They may create student accounts for students to participate in individual competitions and team accounts for teams to participate in team competitions.
• Teachers whose schools have not yet signed up but would like to have their students participate in both team and individual competitions, may visit this page and/or contact us for more information.

STUDENTS

• Students who were registered by a teacher, may participate in both team and individual competitions, in any of the available subjects in their category. Both team and individual accounts for students are created by teachers.
• Students who registered themselves (because their schools have not signed up to participate in HighFour Competitions) may participate in individual competitions, in any of the available subjects in their category.
• Students whose schools have not yet signed up but would like to participate in individual competitions, may visit this page and/or contact us for more information. For further information, please visit the FAQ page.

HighFour Competitions run monthly online competitions ten times a school year, from September to June, for teams and individuals alike. The dates of these rounds are made available in advance for the entire school year before the end of July. The current school year’s dates may be found here.

The monthly online competitions open at 08:00 (GMT+8 time zone) on the published dates and remain accessible for a 48-hour period, during which teams and individual student may log in and complete their competition round.

Competition questions are categorized according to strands and difficulty levels. Team and individual competition rounds contain 20 questions, grouped according to their five category levels, i.e. in each 20-question round, there are 4 questions given in each of the 5 difficulty levels.

Teams and individual students may compete in any of the available subjects, depending on the categories offered. Currently the following subjects and categories are offered:

Other than General Sciences, all questions in all subjects and all categories are “free response” questions. Questions in General Sciences are multiple-choice questions.

All students, regardless of their user type, must abide by the following rules regarding use of resources:

• Chemistry and Physics competitions require the use of formula booklets. These Chemistry and Physics formula booklets are made available to students during practice sessions as well as actual competitions. In order to have them ready in advance, they may be downloaded in PDF format and printed for teams/students to use.
• The use of dictionaries (paper or electronic) is allowed and encouraged. However, students who choose to use a dictionary are advised to pay attention to the time available, as excessive use of dictionaries would take time away from actual problem-solving.
• The use of internet search functions (such as Google, Yahoo, or others) are not allowed under any circumstances.
• The rule regarding the use of calculators may be either of the following:
  • Required: Students must have access to a calculator in order to solve the competition questions. The following subjects (and categories) belong here:
    • Mathematics (Category C: Grades 9-10 and Category D: Grades 11-12),
    • Chemistry (both categories), and
    • Physics (both categories).
  • Not required: Students may decide whether they would like to use a calculator or not. All competition questions may be solved without the help of a calculator. The use of calculators may make some questions easier although it may take time away from actual problem-solving. The following subjects (and categories) belong here:
    • History of Mathematics (all categories),
    • General Sciences (all categories), and
    • Biology (both categories).
  • Not allowed: students must not have access to a calculator under any circumstances. All competition questions must be solved without using calculators. The following subject (categories) belong here:
    • Mathematics (Category A: Grades 4-5 and Category B: Grades 6-8).

Rules regarding the use of calculators is summarized here:

In order to maintain successful and fair competitions, the following rules are to be followed (by teams and individual students alike):

• Answers must be given exactly or as specified in order to receive credit. The required unit of measurement, in most cases, is included. Students are advised to pay attention to “prefixes” and “postfixes” included before and/or after the given text boxes.
• If teams or individual students wish to submit their answers any time before the timer reaches 00:00, they are asked for a confirmation of submission to avoid accidental submission of answers. However, when the timer hits 00:00, all answers are submitted automatically, without requiring confirmation.

In case of typographical or any other errors in questions, either in the active competitions or in the practice module, teachers and students are encouraged to contact us so that such errors may be corrected.

In order to showcase students, teams, or teachers participating in HighFour Competitions, students and teachers are encouraged to send photos through to admin@highfour.co. High quality photos may be published online, on the main page photo gallery.

To download the above rules in PDF form, please click here.

For team competitions, teachers create teams of min. 2 and max. 4 students, within a subject and its categories. It is the teachers’ responsibility to ensure that teams abide by the following rules (in addition to the general rules outlined above):

• One team must use only one device for entering final answers.
• Students form teams of 2-4 within their category (i.e. a student in grade 6, 7, or 8 may not be a member of a team of students of grades 9 and/or 10).
• Teams of less than 4 students are allowed, although not encouraged. Most teams participating in these competitions are of 4 students, therefore a team of 2 or 3 might have a disadvantage compared to other teams.
• Forming more than one team from the same class or same school is certainly encouraged but no student can be a member of more than one team in the same subject.
• Teachers are given access to the PDF version of upcoming competition rounds 2-4 days prior to the starting date of team competitions. In case the PDF copy differs from the competition question available online, students are to follow the version that appears online. This may happen if last minute changes are made to questions and teachers download an earlier version of the questions in the PDF version. In order to avoid this, teachers are advised to download and print/copy the PDF documents no more than 24 hours prior to the starting date of the team competition.
• Students are awarded one point per correct answer and are not penalized for incorrect or blank answers. Because of this, teams are strongly advised not to leave questions unanswered.
• In case of power failure or any other technical difficulties, please note that answers are saved only when students click outside a provided text box (or when the timer reaches 00:00 or when students click on submit to indicate the ending of the round). To ensure that all answers reach the server, it is strongly recommended to enter answers in the text boxes right after a question is solved, instead of waiting for the last minutes to enter all answers.

The ranking of teams is determined based on two factors:

• points awarded (out of the max. possible 20 points), and
• time used (out of the max. allowed 30 minutes).

As such, the following shows an example:

As shown above,

• if two teams obtain the same score, the team with the most time left (from the max. allowed 30 minutes) will earn the higher rank,
• if two teams obtain the same score within the same amount of time, they are both ranked at the same level,
• If two teams use all allowed time (30:00 minutes), the team with the higher score will be given the higher ranking.

Note, that only the top 4 ranked team names are posted publicly. The ranks of the remaining teams are made accessible to teachers within their own accounts. Additionally, further details and statistics are made available for teachers within their accounts.

Participation certificates are automatically issued to all participating students. Additionally, each member of the top 4 teams receives Certificate of Excellence as well. It is essential that students are registered with the name that should appear on the certificate. In case a spelling error is made, teachers can edit their students’ names, which results in the automatic update of the names on the certificates.

To download the above team rules in PDF form, please click here.

For individual competitions, students may compete in any of the subjects within their category. In order to maintain successful and fair competitions, students must abide by the following rules (in addition to the general rules outlined above):

• Individual students are allowed and encouraged to participate on both team and individual competitions. Those students who were registered by a teacher have access to both. Those students who registered themselves may approach their school/teacher with the intent of joining team competitions in addition to individual competitions.
• One student must use only one device for entering final answers.
• One student must not create multiple individual student accounts for himself/herself.
• Competition questions for individual rounds are randomly generated based on predetermined difficulty levels. As such, no two set of individual round competition questions are identical, to avoid the possibility of academic dishonesty.
• For similar reasons, the questions presented in the monthly team competition rounds are completely different from the ones presented in the monthly individual competition rounds. As a result, students (who were registered by teachers) may complete competitions either as a member of a team or as an individual.
• The number of points awarded per question in individual rounds is dependent on the difficulty level of the question:
  • Questions with 1-star difficulty level (labelled “very easy”) are worth 1 point.
  • Questions with 2-star difficulty level (labelled as “easy”) are worth 2 points.
  • Questions with 3-star difficulty level (labelled as “medium”) are worth 3 points.
  • Questions with 4-star difficulty level (labelled as “hard”) are worth 4 points.
  • Questions with 5-star difficulty level (labelled as “very hard”) are worth 5 points.
  As there are 4 questions given in each of the 5 difficulty levels, the max. total points possible for each round of individual competitions is 60 points.
• Similarly to team competitions, students are not penalized for incorrect or blank answers. Because of this, students are strongly advised not to leave questions unanswered.
• In case of power failure or any other technical difficulties, please note that answers are to be submitted after each question (or are submitted automatically when the timer reaches 00:00 or when students click on submit to indicate the ending of the round). To ensure that all answers reach the server, it is strongly recommended to enter answers in the text boxes right after a question is solved, instead of waiting for the last minutes to enter all answers.

The ranking of individual students is determined based on two factors:

• points awarded (out of the max. possible 60 points), and
• time used (out of the max. allowed 60 minutes).

As such, the following shows an example:

As shown above,

• if two individual students obtain the same score, the student with the most time left (from the max. allowed 60 minutes) will earn the higher rank,
• if two individual students obtain the same score within the same amount of time, they are both ranked at the same level,
• If two individual students use all allowed time (60:00 minutes), the student with the higher score will be given the higher ranking.

Note, that all student nick names (that are created by the students prior to starting the competition) are posted publicly.

Certificates are automatically issued to all participating students, showing the number of points achieved from the max. possible 60 points. It is essential that students are registered with the name that should appear on the certificate. In case a spelling error is made,

• students who were registered by teachers can ask their teachers to edit their names, which results in the automatic update of the names on the certificates,
• students who registered themselves may edit their names, which results in the automatic update of the names on the certificates.

In case of any errors, please contact us for assistance.

To download the above individual rules in PDF form, please click here.