National Tournament of Academic Excellence - Topic and Question Formats

Topic and Question Formats

The questions used in the NTAE are wholly unique among national tournaments. Unlike most other tournaments there are multiple choice and matching questions, some of which can be deceptively difficult. There are also "fill-in-the-blank style questions," as well as free response questions (standard to high school quizbowl).

While topics range across the academic canon, there is an overall de-emphasis of pop culture questions, and a marked increase in the number of mathematics questions (teams are provided calculators). Foreign language is also utilized often, with teams usually choosing from amongst French or Spanish questions (in the past, German and Latin were options, but these have been discontinued).

There are also visual questions displayed on a television monitor, and audio questions played from recordings. While these two question formats can be used for any question category, audio questions are most often used for music and foreign language questions, while video questions are most often used for art questions.