Newsroom
News & Updates
Season announcements, exam guidance, and Team USA results from the U.S. National Chemistry Olympiad.
-
What a Chemistry Olympiad Year Actually Costs: A Parent’s Guide to Hours, Checkpoints and Honest Signals (2026)
For families weighing a USNCO track: which route is open by passport status, what the ladder narrows to, realistic weekly hours, and the checkpoints that show if it is working.
-
The Periodic Table Is Provided. So What Should You Actually Memorise? A USNCO Recall System (2026)
A provided periodic table changes what memorising means. The three-bucket triage, the short list that genuinely cannot be derived, and an eight-minute daily retrieval drill.
-
Aqueous Equilibrium, Decoded: pH, Buffers, Titration Curves and Ksp for the USNCO (2026)
The one USNCO block that never stays in its box: set-up discipline, the four regions of a titration curve, buffer arithmetic and Ksp, in the order the exam uses them.
-
The Graph and Table Questions: Reading Chemistry Data Under USNCO Time Pressure (2026)
Titration curves, rate plots and cooling curves test a skill no syllabus names: reading chemistry off a graph. Five moves, four plots and the table trick that finds reaction order.
-
The Last Six Questions: USNCO Organic and Biochemistry, Decoded (2026)
Organic and biochemistry sit at questions 55 to 60 of every USNCO multiple-choice paper: the block students reach last and train least. What it covers, and how to fix it.
-
Your Weakest Topic Costs You Six Marks: Planning USNCO Revision Around the Official Blueprint (2026)
ACS publishes the multiple-choice blueprint: ten topic areas, six questions each, in a fixed order. Here is how to turn that map into a revision plan and a per-block scorecard.
-
How to Start a USNCO Problem You Do Not Recognise: The First Four Minutes (2026)
The freeze in front of an unfamiliar chemistry problem is a search problem, not a knowledge problem. A four-minute protocol: strip, classify, anchor, then commit or bail.
-
Stoichiometry, Solutions and Gases: The USNCO Topics You Think You Have Already Mastered (2026)
Nobody loses a chemistry olympiad on entropy alone. The quantitative foundation band, moles, solutions and gases, is where strong students quietly leak marks under time pressure.
-
The ACS International Chapter Route: How US-Passport Students in China Actually Enter the USNCO (2026)
One of the three USNCO eligibility cases can run the full route from inside China, through an ACS International Chemical Sciences Chapter. What it requires and how to check it.
-
Building a School Chemistry Olympiad Programme: A Three-Year Plan for China-Based Schools (2026)
A club runs events; a programme builds chemists. A three-year build for China-based schools: entry-route governance, staffing and timetable, and what to measure instead of medals.