Where this one sits among the others.

Students in China preparing for physics competitions usually hear four or five names at once, with no explanation of how they relate. They are not alternatives to each other, and picking by prestige alone is how people end up in the wrong one.

The useful distinction is not difficulty. It is whether a contest is open — anyone whose school enters them may sit it — or selective, meaning it is a stage in a national team pipeline that you reach by qualifying.

Open contests and selective pipelines are different routes

The distinction that matters

Open contests and selective pipelines

Open

Anyone whose school enters them

No qualifying round, no nomination, no prior result. You sit it because your school registers you. The PhysicsBowl works this way — AAPT’s position is that any high school student may take it.

Good for: A first contest, a benchmark, a wide field
Structured by: Divisions and regionsRather than by filtering entrants out.

Selective

Stages you reach by qualifying

A first round feeds a harder second round, which feeds a training camp and ultimately a national team. Most students who enter never reach the later stages, and that is the design rather than a failure.

Good for: Students already deep in physics
Demands: Written solutions, long papers, olympiad technique

Orientation

The names you will hear

Only the first row is verified against a primary source on this site. Treat the rest as a map, and confirm details with each organiser.

Contest	Entry	Shape, and who it suits
PhysicsBowlAAPT, United States	Open	40 multiple-choice questions in 45 minutes, two divisions, awards per region and division. Sat at your own school or a test centre. Suits a student who wants a real, externally-set benchmark without committing to an olympiad pipeline — and it is the one this whole site is about.
F = maUnited States	Selective, stage 1	A multiple-choice mechanics paper that acts as the first stage of the US physics olympiad route. Narrower in topic than the PhysicsBowl and deeper in it. Suits a student who wants to attempt the olympiad path.
USAPhOUnited States	Selective, stage 2	Reached by qualifying from F = ma. Written, worked solutions rather than multiple choice, and substantially longer. Feeds the US team selection camp.
BPhOUnited Kingdom	Selective route	The British physics olympiad family, with several papers pitched at different year groups. Written answers, longer questions, a different problem style from the American multiple-choice format.
IPhOInternational	National team only	The international olympiad itself. You do not enter it; you are selected onto a national team through that country’s pipeline. Theoretical and experimental papers over several days.

Check before you plan

Eligibility is the first thing to verify, not the last

Several contests students in China are pointed towards carry nationality or school-location conditions. Those conditions decide whether a plan is possible at all.

F = ma is commonly restricted

The US olympiad first round is widely described as open only to US citizens, lawful permanent residents, or students currently enrolled at a school in the United States. If that holds, the olympiad pipeline behind it is not a route available to a student sitting in China at a Chinese school — however strong they are. We have not verified this against the organiser and you should, but check it before building a plan around that path, because it is the kind of condition that invalidates one entirely.

This is the practical reason the open contests matter to students outside the United States. The PhysicsBowl has no nationality condition — AAPT states that any high school student may take it, and it maintains seven regions specifically for Asia and the Middle East precisely so that entrants there compete against one another rather than being folded into a US field. Whatever else you enter, that structural difference is worth understanding.

Other names that come up in the same conversation include the British physics and astrophysics olympiads, the Canadian physics olympiad, and university-run contests such as the Princeton and Waterloo physics competitions. They vary widely in format — written proofs, mixed multiple-choice and long answer, individual or team — and in how open they are to international entrants. Check each organiser directly rather than relying on any summary, including this one.

Choosing

Three ways people get this wrong

Picking the hardest one available

A selective olympiad paper you cannot finish tells a reader less than an open contest you handled well. Difficulty is only useful when it is difficulty you can demonstrate against. This is the same judgement as choosing between the two PhysicsBowl divisions, one level up — and the same answer applies.

Treating them as substitutes

They are not competing for the same slot in your year. An open, 45-minute, multiple-choice contest and a multi-stage olympiad pipeline demand different preparation and produce different evidence. Plenty of students do both, in the order that suits their course.

Ignoring the calendar

Contests cluster, and so do school exams. The PhysicsBowl sits in a late-March-to-early-April window; olympiad first rounds fall elsewhere in the year. Before adding a second contest, check that its preparation period does not collide with the one you already committed to.

If you are choosing your first physics contest, the honest case for this one is its shape rather than its prestige: it is open, it is short, it is externally set and scored by a body that has published a named editor every year since 1985, and its past papers and solutions are free. That makes it a clean first measurement. What you do afterwards is a separate decision.