United States Academic Decathlon
organization
The Academic Decathlon (also called AcDec, AcaDeca or AcaDec) is an annual high school academic competition organized by the non-profit United States Academic Decathlon (USAD). The competition consists of seven objective multiple choice tests, two subjective performance events, and an essay. Academic Decathlon was created by Robert Peterson in 1968 for local schools in Orange County, California, and was expanded nationally in 1981 by Robert Peterson, William Patton, first President of the new USAD Board; and Phillip Bardos, Chairman of the new USAD Board. That year, 17 states and the District of Columbia participated, a number that has grown to include most of the United States and some international schools. In 2015 Academic Decathlon held its first ever International competition in Shanghai, China. Once known as United States Academic Decathlon, on March 1, 2013, it began operating as the Academic Decathlon.
Academic Decathlon is designed to include students from all achievement levels. Teams generally consist of nine members, who are divided into three divisions based on a custom calculated grade point average: Honors (3.8–4.00 GPA), Scholastic (3.20–3.79 GPA), and Varsity (0.00–3.19 GPA). Each team member competes in all ten events against other students in their division, and team scores are calculated using the top two overall individual scores from each team in all three divisions. Gold, silver, and bronze medals are awarded for individual events and for overall scores.
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This entry incorporates text from “United States Academic Decathlon” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.