Participation

Can I compete in the IBO?
You can only participate if you meet certain criteria. Most importantly, you have to win the Biology Olympiad in your country or region. Each IBO member country/region can send up to four winners. There are some other restrictions:

• You should not be older than 20 years of age (at 1 July of the year of the competition).
• You can only participate twice.
• You have not yet started university (or equivalent) as a full time/regular student.
• You should be enrolled in a regular secondary school for general education (e.g. not specific for STEM or biology). Note: in some countries this excludes home-schooled students and foreign or international schools. Please contact your local coordinator to learn more.

There are some other criteria. For the full list, please see section §3.5 from our Operational Guidelines.

My country or region does not have a Biology Olympiad, can I still participate?
No, unfortunately not. We do not allow students to participate independently or representing a country or region that is not members of our community.

Where can I register for participation?
You cannot register for participation with the IBO directly. Please talk with your high school teacher, look at the website of your national/regional competition, or contact your local coordinator. Please see here: IBO member country/region.

I am living abroad, can I still compete?
Only in rare cases. Your place of residence and your nationality do not matter, but the location of your school does. For example, if you are a German but go to a Swiss school across the border, you would be eligible to participate in the Swiss Biology Olympiad. If you become a winner there, you may represent Switzerland in the IBO (but not Germany). If you go to a German school in the USA, you would not be allowed to represent Germany in the IBO. In this case it is also unlikely that you can participate in the USA Biology Olympiad, unless the school is considered a regular school for general education by the USA government. If you want to know more, please contact your local coordinator.

I won, now what?
Congratulations! Your next challenge is the international competition. Here you will make Theoretical and Practical Exams. The Theoretical Exams encompass ca. 100 tasks in largely closed-ended format (e.g., multiple true-false). These tasks cover all domains of biology and require you to apply your science knowledge in analyzing advanced biological phenomena. The Practicals typically fall into 3-4 laboratories. The content domains for each Practical are announced ca. 6-12 months before an IBO. In the lab, students showcase biological skills by conducting investigations and analyzing data.

A typical IBO week is structured like this:

How can I prepare for the IBO?
There is no fixed syllabus or curriculum for the IBO. You should expect a large variety of topics to be part of the examinations. Always consult your team leaders for advice on how to prepare. Many countries use university level general biology textbooks in their final preparation rounds. Taking a look at old IBO exams can be worthwhile. Our IBO's Operational Guidelines provide some information on the distribution of theoretical topics (§3.7.3) and general practical skills (Appendix 2).

IBO exams do not focus on knowledge reproduction (i.e. factual based questions, easily prepared by rote memorization). Instead we focus on how biology works in real life situations: the vast majority of problems you will face during a modern IBO exam will test your practical skills, your biological insight, your analytical approach and capacity for problem solving.