Summer Camp FAQs

Public Forum Debate (PF) is the most popular format of competitive debate at the middle school and high school levels in the U.S. It is a 2v2 debate format that challenges students to discuss important contemporary issues in politics, economics, international relations, and science. Debaters must research current events and write compelling arguments. PF rounds can be judged by any adult, from any background, even if they have no prior debate/judging experience (hence the name “public forum”). Thus, the goal of PF is to craft accessible speeches that can persuade any given person to believe your arguments. This is why PF helps students develop the most useful communication skills that someone can have in life.

Speech encompasses a variety of competitive events at the middle school and high school levels. In these events, students deliver a speech that was written by either them or another author, and judges evaluate the performances based on the quality of the students’ public speaking. The most popular speech events in the U.S. include Original Oratory, Declamation, Dramatic Interpretation, Oral Interpretation, Humorous Interpretation, and Duo Interpretation. In the events where competitors must write their own speeches, such as Original Oratory, students must not only try to achieve perfect delivery, but also craft beautifully-written and well-substantiated arguments. In this way, speech does not only exercise a student’s public speaking skills, but also their research and writing skills.

Speech and debate equips students with the extremely valuable skills of research, communication, critical thinking, writing, argumentation, and public speaking. Achieving grand success in speech and debate, such as winning a national tournament, demonstrates mastery of these skills. Having these fundamental skills, and demonstrating mastery of them, takes people very far in life. In the classroom, students who do speech/debate attain 18% higher standardized test scores than honors students who don’t do speech/debate. Moreover, Colleges love to see speech/debate awards on a student’s resume. Thus, success in speech and debate increases a student’s chance of being accepted into a top university by 30%. Furthermore, the skills mastered through speech and debate can help someone achieve career success in any profession. For example, 25% of debaters become corporate executives or high-ranking government officials. This is why there is an endless list of famous people who did speech and debate. The list includes U.S. Presidents like Abraham Lincoln, John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson, Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan, and Richard Nixon; Supreme Court Justices like Antonin Scalia, Samuel Alito, Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor, and Ketanji Brown Jackson; media personalities and actors like Stephen Colbert, Oprah Winfrey, and Brad Pitt; and business leaders like Warren Buffett and Jack Dorsey.

The biggest difference between speech and debate is that debate involves a direct, back-and-forth confrontation between two teams, while speech is a non-confrontational presentation. This means that debate emphasizes the quality of your research and argumentation, while speech emphasizes the quality of your public speaking, writing, and delivery. At tournaments, you win a debate round if you persuade your judge to vote for you rather than your opponent. But you win a speech round if you earn a higher score on your performance from your judge than all of the other competitors in your round. In other words, debate is strictly win or lose, but speech is about your score-based ranking compared to other competitors’ rankings.

The Omega Advantage is very real. Compared to other camps, our price per hour of instruction is 30%-50% less expensive, making us the more affordable option. Additionally, we offer more personalized learning. The average student-to-teacher ratio at debate camps across the U.S. is 10:1, while our ratio is 7:1. This means that at Omega, each student receives more attention from coaches than they would at other programs. Speaking of coaches, our faculty consists of the most qualified instructors that you can find. Our coaches attend Ivy League and top 20 universities, and they all won national championships in high school speech/debate. Our coaches know what it takes to achieve grand success in speech/debate. Thus, our curriculum is designed by former champions to train future champions!

One of our institution's core values is ensuring that students learn at the level that is right for them—a level that will challenge them to improve but not overwhelm them. This is why we always group students into different labs according to their experience, skill, age, and academic grade level. We take our lab placement process very seriously. We make these decisions based on two factors. The first is the self-evaluation and previous experience that is listed on a student's summer camp registration form (we ask for these items on the form). And second, on the first day of camp, we will have our students participate in a series of debate exercises that will reveal their current skill level. We will then use both the information reported on the form and the takeaways from our in-person evaluation to decide lab placement. We have an extremely strong track record with accurate lab placements. Based on past feedback, we have always placed each student in the group that optimizes their learning experience.

Each lab at our summer camp contains, on average, 14 students, and is led by 2 instructors. This is why our student-to-teacher ratio is 7:1. We always make sure to maintain our industry-leading student-to-teacher ratio so that our students receive the most personalized education. With our lab setup, each student receives plenty of attention during class time. In addition, we have one-on-one learning built into our curriculum. The final hour of camp every day is dedicated to Office Hours. Office Hours is an opportunity for students to design their own education and learn from coaches in a one-on-one setting. Students can ask our coaches whatever questions they have and work on whatever they need help with. Office Hours makes our summer camp a truly individualized learning experience.

We encourage our summer camp alumni to join the Omega Speech and Debate Travel Team. If you completed our summer camp, then you are ready to compete at real-life debate tournaments in your age/experience bracket. Our travel team program takes students to national tournaments throughout the debate season, which aligns with the school year. The team gathers for weekly practices (on weekends), led by our most esteemed coaches, who help students improve their skills and prepare for upcoming competitions. Our travel team is an excellent way for students to apply the skills they learned during our summer camp, accomplish their competitive goals, and add big debate awards to their résumé.

We follow a two-step process to help shy students develop unshakeable confidence. First, in the beginning, we teach them tried-and-true public speaking tactics for overcoming speech anxiety. Once students implement these tactics, they will feel comfortable standing up and speaking in front of audiences. Second, we help students realize that their thoughts and voices matter. One of the most common causes of shyness and speech anxiety is the fear of being judged by other people. We show students that they are smart and talented enough that whatever they verbally express is worth hearing, and is more likely to be positively judged than negatively judged. Once students embrace this truth, they develop intrinsic confidence. We help students reach that point by providing them with a lot of encouragement, positive feedback, and speech assistance.

For young students, our priority is showing them how fun speech/debate is and helping them become passionate about the activity. This is because passion is the foundation for and prerequisite to success—you cannot succeed in an endeavor if you are not passionate enough to work hard and do your best in that endeavor. We cultivate passion for speech/debate by ensuring that all of our lessons are engaging for young students. We have our young students participate in interactive exercises, team building activities, and extremely fun and educational games. This is another feature of Omega that separates us from other speech/debate programs. Most other camps will rush young students into intense training, burning them out and destroying their passion before they can even begin their speech/debate careers. We prevent that scenario by helping young students develop a passion for the activity before providing them with high-level, intellectually challenging training.