Frequently Asked Questions
- So what's ACF all about then?
- ACF stands for Academic Competition Federation, a loosely centralized non-incorporated, non-profit organization dedicated to providing low-cost, high-quality academic quiz tournaments. ACF differs from other quiz bowl activities in its emphasis on hard facts, quality clues, and non-extraneous writing. The questions you will hear at our tournaments are academic - we keep the amount of pop culture or semi-academic questions to a minimum. We pride ourselves on the highest standard of academic question writing. We offer three tournaments throughout the academic year. ACF Regionals is usually held on the last weekend of February with midlevel difficulty at 7-8 universities and colleges around the country. ACF Nationals is usually held in late April at a single site. Our Fall tournaments, like the Regional tournaments, are held at regional university and college locations, but the questions are more accessible while maintaining their academic nature.
- Sounds great! Who can play in these ACF tournaments?
- In order to be eligible for the championship of an official ACF tournament, a team must be composed of students all attending a single school. Each member of the team must take at least one class for credit during the school year in order to be considered eligible to represent the team. A player may compete in ACF tournaments during a school year before the class is actually taken. A student who does not meet these requirements but is involved with some other academic research at a school may appeal to ACF. Appeals will be handled on a case-by-case basis. If a team or any member of a team is found after a tournament to have violated these eligibility requirements, that team will retroactively forfeit any ACF titles obtained during the course of the school year. If you have any questions about eligibility issues, please contact ACF before coming to the tournament. "Bastard" or "masters" teams (that is, teams containing players not all from one school, or players who have graduated) may be allowed to play at official ACF tournaments, but only as exhibition teams. ACF reserves the right to disallow any team from playing at one of its tournaments.
- Who is part of ACF?
- ACF is a diverse group of individuals dedicated to the aforementioned goals. The editorial membership of ACF typically changes every year as older editors retire and younger writers step in to fill their place. You can see who the current and past members of ACF are on this site.
- Can anyone join ACF?
- ACF is a very open-ended organization; in principle, anyone could become a member. However, being an ACF editor typically requires a non-negligible amount of work, as well as a working knowledge of how to write good questions. If you're interested in joining ACF, contact any one of the current ACF editors with some sample questions and let us know what particular tournaments you'd be interested in working on.
- Is being an ACF editor a lot of work?
- Short answer: it depends. Long answer: the general method of introducing new editors to the ACF editing process has been to assign them work in their area of expertise. Usually, one of the senior editors will coordinate the efforts of an editing team, which typically consists of between 3 and 6 people, and will assign the various writing and editing tasks. A typical workload for a single junior editor might be on the order of 40/40 (40 tossups and 40 bonuses), spread over a couple of months.
- How can I keep up on the latest things that are happening in the quizbowl world and discuss quizbowl?
- For the latest information on ACF events, please keep an eye on this page. Any important information pertaining to Fall, Regionals, or Nationals will be posted here. Also, you might want to check out the quizbowl forum managed by PACE (a high school quizbowl organization), which features an active collegiate section. Announcements for all collegiate tournaments will be posted there, and you can also discuss quizbowl to your heart's content.