The scale of IQ 2008 was evident from the number of teams that participated
at all the 32 cities. At every city, students swarmed at the venue a couple
of hours before the quiz could begin. The student queues for on-the-spot
registration were long enough to be mistaken for queues at any busy railway
station. The crowd exceeded the hall capacity at almost all the quiz venues.
At cities like Aurangabad and Belgaum, the number of participating teams was
as high as 1200+ teams.
IQ quiz rounds have evolved significantly from the standard routine of plain
questions and answers that characterized the quiz at its inception. IQ
quiz masters, particularly the renowned quizmaster Charanpreet, keep
participants riveted in between the rounds with interesting facts and
trivia, friendly ragging and yes, generous servings of crazy humour. With
its unique format, IQ has created a loyal fan following amongst the
undergraduate quizzing groups.
At the city finals this year, IQ had city and semifinalist teams from last
year reappearing in the initial rounds and winning their way to the rounds
that followed. One such team is the Symbiosis Law College team from Pune.
The Symbiosis trio comprising Suvajit Chakraborty, Sayak Dasgupta and
Abhishek Ray have reached the IQ semifinals yet again this year. This IQ
2007 semifinalist team was rewarded last year with a chance to participate
in the Semi-Finals and National Finals on board the luxury cruise liner
Superstar Libra en route to Goa. IQ 2008 was set to give them and other
semifinalists an even bigger high, with its locale for the Semis and
Finals –The National University of Singapore.
Teams representing esteemed colleges like IIT- Mumbai, NITK, BIT, Mesra, St.
Stephen’s College, Delhi reached the semifinals of IQ 2008. 12 of India’s
smartest collegians battled it out for the national honours at the National
University of Singapore – one of the world’s leading business schools on 7th
March 2008.
The St. Stephen’s team supported by Manorama Year Book won the finals of IQ
2008 with a huge margin, winning a 6 day fully paid holiday to Singapore and
a 1 lakh rupee grant from the Nagesh Rane Memorial Trust for their college.
This is St. Stepehen’s second consecutive win at IQ.
The Runners up were Assam Engineering College, Guwahati,winning a 3 day
fully paid holiday to Singapore. The Second Runners-up NIT, Trichy won bikes
from TVS and the Third Runners-up Symbiosis Law School, Pune won Laptops.All
the remaining semifinalist won Ipods for themselves.
Mr. Kulwant Singh, Dean NUS who was also the chief guest at the show, also
gave away the prizes.