Soviet Student Olympiads

Soviet Student Olympiad was an annual set of contests for students in USSR. There were two separate multi-round competitions every year: for higher education (universities) and general education (starting from 7th to 10th/11th grade). Both competitions had several rounds, and winners from lower rounds would go to the next round. Not only individual members, but teams were awarded too. The main difference between two Olympiads was that the school one had separate threads for every grade, while the university one was for all students.

Both Olympiads had the same format of the contests. Students would come in teams representing their location, e.g. schools or republics. Each contest could have 2-3 parts. For instance, the Republican round of University Olympiads on physics could have three parts: theory, lab and computer modeling. All students were given the same set of problems to solve. They would work on solutions strictly individually - no teamwork was allowed - and then they were scored by judges. Team scores were simply sum of individual member scores. Earlier rounds could take just one round, while the later rounds could span for a week having several parts.

Contests were conducted on many subject of Soviet school curriculum such as Mathematics, Physics, Chemistry, Biology, and others. These Olympiads had several levels based on Soviet Union's administrative structure. These were: School, District (Raion), City, Regional (Oblast), Republican and All-Union contests. These competitions were organized separate for every school grade. Depending on the subject and geographical region the highest round of the Olympiads varied from the All-Union level in Mathematics, Physics, and Chemistry to the Regional level in some other disciplines.

In addition, at certain time Moscow carried out joint "Olympiads in Linguistics and Mathematics" (Олимпиада по языкознанию и математике). After each such Olympiad its problems were printed in the Science and Life (Наука и Жизнь) popular science magazine. There were numerous other Olympiads in Moscow including interdisciplinary "Lomonosov tour".

Besides, there were correspondence Olympiads, in particular, Olympiads carried out by some newspapers, journals and universities. One of the important correspondence Olympiads was organized by the Kvant magazine. Its winners were admitted to the Republican round of the All-Union Physics and Mathematics Olympiads.

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