Rules
The Rules
The official rules and eligibility governing the National Economics Challenge as established by the Council for Economic Education are clearly defined on the following website - CEE's Official NEC Rules & Eligibility. Please read and review carefully.
How to Join
Teachers, to participate in the EconChallenge ONLINE!, simply follow these steps:
- Go to econchallenge.unl.edu
- Select your state and register as a teacher.
- Once you have registered as a teacher, you can begin to create student teams of 3 to 4 students in one of these three divisions:
- Adam Smith: students enrolled in any two semester econ macro and micro course sequence or any course labeled as AP, IB, honors, or differentiated. If you previously participated in the David Ricardo Division, you must register for Adam Smith in this year's competition.
- David Ricardo: any one semester, introductory or general, combined macro and micro economics course. Teams are encouraged to compete in the division that would challenge them the most. See official rules at economicschallenge.councilforeconed.org
- Any team consisting of one or more students enrolled in a course listed in A.1.c. must compete in the Adam Smith Division.
- Teams shall only compete against other teams in their own division.
Team Composition
- Teams shall be comprised of no more than four (4) members.
- Competing with only three (3) members, if necessary, is possible and permissible.
- All members of a team must be from the same public school, private school, community organization or club, or afterschool program. This means that students from different schools are eligible to be on the same team, if they are all part of one of the groups mentioned in this section (A.2.c). Home-based high school students may join teams of any of the groups mentioned in this section (A.2.c) or may start a team with other home-based high school students in their county.
- A team that qualifies for the National Semi-Finals and/or National Finals may reconstitute the members of its team prior to the competition. However, if a team must reconstitute members of a team, the team must retain a minimum of one original team member. All team members of the reconstituted team must meet the team composition conditions in A.2., and students must meet the general student eligibility conditions in A.3., as well as, the eligibility conditions for the division in which the team qualified (see A.1.).
- All teams must have a coach, who is an associate (e.g. employee or volunteer) of the team school, organization, or program, and who is fit to accompany students, should the team advance to the finals.
Student Eligibility
- Students must be enrolled for credit in a qualifying public high school, private high school, or home-based high school course (see A.1.b and A.1.c.) at some time during the current academic year.
- Students who have taken or are taking economics courses for college credit from a post-secondary instructor are not eligible to compete.
- Students who have taken more than one semester of economics at any time must compete in the Adam Smith Division.
- No student is permitted to compete in the David Ricardo Division more than one year. Any returning student who has already participated in the National Economics Challenge (at the state-level or higher) must compete in the Adam Smith Division in subsequent years, regardless of previous or current coursework.
- Home-schooled students must compete in the Adam Smith Division.
Test Procedures
- After creating the teams, you will be given unique access codes for each student. Distribute these access codes to your students when they are ready to take the Challenge. Students are only allowed a blank paper and pencil during their exam. No calculators are allowed.
- Once competition begins, students can enter the EconChallenge ONLINE website and complete a 30 question rapid fire exam consisting of macro, micro, and international questions. Students on the same team are not required to take the exam at the same time or even on the same day.
- Each student will take a different randomly selected exam from a pool of questions in the database.
- Team members are prohibited from working collectively on any part of the exam, nor will they be allowed outside help.
- During the online exam, each student is allowed a blank piece of paper and a pen or pencil to work out solutions.
- Aside from the computer that is being used to take the exam, students may not use electronic/personal devices (calculators, phones, laptops, other computers, etc.).
- Aside from the testing portal use of the internet or other resource materials is prohibited.
- Coaches are responsible for ensuring adequate access to computers and a reliable internet connection.
- It is not the responsibility of the Council for Economic Education or EconChallenge ONLINE! to resolve or mitigate technical issues on the school’s end. All students will participate utilizing the EconChallenge ONLINE! portal and the school/organization’s internet connection.
- Any problems resulting from interruptions to internet connections, computer failure, student error, etc., are the responsibility of the coaches and students. To avoid any issues, we recommend teachers have students log in and take practice tests.
- Supervision must be provided for the online challenge to ensure legitimacy.
- The testing window closes April 5, 2024 at 11:59 PM EST. Any submissions after this deadline may be disqualified and considered invalid.
Scoring
- The sum of the top three individual scores on each team make up the team score. Scoring on individual tests are as follows:
- +10 points for each correct answer.
- +0 points for each incorrect answer.
- +0 points for each unanswered question.
- The winners of the EconChallenge ONLINE! will be notified once the competition has ended.