To go to Championships...or not....

[rob_c]

Originally Posted by Katie_UPS

With IB there is no option to take the test on another date. Its a now-or-never deal.

... That is with the exception of: a war in your respective testing region (country/city etc); a natural disaster (earthquake/hurricane/tornado etc); or if you're in an unstable health condition (ie. you're in the ER because you got run over by a car on the way to your exam) ...
You can't be late to an exam, either, as IB has strict policies regarding when you may begin the testing process - to within a 30-ish minute long period of time (all exams are taken on the same exact day at the same regional time all over the world, so IB is very particular about when an exam may start in a given te zone)

As far as students' abilities to sit multiple higher-level high school exams and attend CMP: if a student is committed to their studies throughout the course of the entire year, then I should think they'd be capable of attending an event such as CMP without suffering any adverse issues taking their exams (with maybe the issue of falling asleep during the exam - I was exhausted after I got back...)
EricH brought up the point of seeing how many students would be able to go to a competition given that exams are so close... I mentioned to my parents yesterday about how close CMP is to exams for he 2011 season and they told me that if I were to have had my exams so soon after a competition they would not allow me to attend. If there are not enough students allowed to attend the competition based upon the pretext that exams are so close (or any other reason), it would seem sensible to decide not to attend CMP... If not enough students can go to participate as a competing team, then it's not worth doing... That doesn't mean, however, that a small group could not attend just for the experience and for the conference.
-Rob.