here's how i won first place internationally in HOSA.

here's how i won first place internationally in HOSA. i've been part of HOSA since freshman year and went to state leadership conference in California for three years and i placed first place in California for healthcare issues exam which allowed me to go to international level and i won first place internationally. i had to take exams against 20k+ people and i got the highest score. first thing is that the HOSA guidelines that they post on the websites is going to be your best friend. you need to know the documents and the guidelines from top to bottom to the point where you can recite it in any given moment. this will allow you to better sense what judges look for making sure you don't lose unnecessary points and what you are going to be tested on and exactly the steps that you need to take to get a good score. for my specific event: healthcare issues exam, i was basically told to go to these certain websites which were health and health news websites and anything that was posted in a certain time frame that they gave me was subject for testing. i would basically study months in advance before every round and after advancing to the next round. if you want to be best at something you have to use unconventional study methods. so that means i literally went through every single detail, made it a habit to read the news every morning. i didn't do it just to win but to learn. i took notes on every single one, including who the authors' names were, what the study methods looked like, what the different methodologies for research looked like, etcetera. next, i tried to hypothesize possible hidden judging rubrics and possible questions. if you look on the guidelines it'll show you an example of what a question might look like. this will give you a better sense of what kind of questions they can ask for this batch of articles, allowing you to basically quiz yourself. it's all about pacing yourself and making sure that you know what you're talking about and just getting prepared according to it. good luck.