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From Zero to IBO Bronze: Ruslanbekov Ulukbek's Preparation Roadmap

How many hours it takes, which books to read, how to study so it sticks, which other olympiads are worth entering, and the exact order Ruslanbekov Ulukbek, an IBO 2026 bronze medallist, would follow if he started from zero.

Ruslanbekov Ulukbek

Ruslanbekov Ulukbek

🥉 IBO 2026 Bronze Medallist · Kyrgyzstan 🇰🇬

Ruslanbekov Ulukbek wrote a full guide to Kyrgyzstan's National Biology Olympiad. The country-specific half is on his testimonial page. This article is the other half: the preparation advice that applies to any student aiming for an IBO medal.

I will take you through the preparation and give you advice that can save you hundreds of hours of wasted effort.

Everything below is Ruslanbekov Ulukbek’s own advice, lightly edited for the page. The books, papers and olympiads he names are his recommendations from his own path, not an official syllabus.

How long does it take to prepare?

That is the million-dollar question! You might be surprised, but it may not take as long as you think because you will have this guidance and will not need to waste hundreds of hours studying low-value material.

I believe that reaching IBO bronze level requires approximately 1,500 hours of focused and consistent study. For perspective, I spent around 1,440 hours on TikTok in sixth grade, so if you are not getting a medal, what are you doing?

Depending on how much free time you have, he sees three realistic routes to bronze level:

  • Two years. Two hours on weekdays and four to six hours on weekends. You genuinely need to put in those hours consistently, because you quickly forget material when you study only occasionally.
  • One year. Around four hours per day.
  • Six months. The extreme route: about eight hours every day, which is basically a full-time job without weekends.

Two examples he points to

Ruslanbekov Ulukbek’s first example is Daniyar Gaipov, an IBO bronze medallist in both 2022 and 2023, who began his olympiad journey after the winter holidays in ninth grade, in 2022, and became the strongest member of Kyrgyzstan’s team that same year. Ruslanbekov Ulukbek notes that Daniyar was already good at mathematics, although not at an extraordinary level. In an interview with the Russian-language news site Limon.kg, as quoted in Ruslanbekov Ulukbek’s guide, Daniyar said he learned he had made the team on April 15, 2022, and from then on studied six to eight hours per day on weekdays only, resting on weekends.

So yes, Daniyar achieved it in fewer than 1,500 hours. However, do not assume that everyone can reproduce that result from the same starting point. That is why I use 1,500 hours as a safer estimate.

His second example is Alikhan Ashirkhanov, a student from Kazakhstan whom Ruslanbekov Ulukbek describes as winning an IBO bronze medal in eighth grade, finishing as the second-highest-scoring bronze medallist overall, and then earning a top-10 silver medal in ninth grade. He began preparing in seventh grade, and in eighth grade continued with guidance from a bronze medallist.

I do not know exactly how many hours he studied, but his example shows that you can win a medal no matter your grade and that older students shouldn't scare you.

Sources: Limon.kg interview with Daniyar Gaipov. The Alikhan Ashirkhanov details are Ruslanbekov Ulukbek’s account and we have not checked them against the IBO results.

What to read

There is no clear separation between preparing for the early stages and the later ones. There is no small book that will get you through the first stage and a slightly larger one that will get you through the second. Instead, I am going to recommend materials that will help you throughout every stage and at the IBO itself.

Theory

1. Read Campbell Biology first. The 12th edition is his pick. The 13th is also fine, and so is the 11th, because that is the edition of the Russian translation; the differences do not matter much for olympiad preparation.

You are not getting far without reading this book. You will need its content in every stage and at the IBO itself, so do not skip it. It will give you the theoretical foundation required to pass each stage and enter the national team.

2. Deepen it with Vander’s and Brooker. For more depth, he recommends Vander’s Human Physiology and Brooker’s genetics textbook.

These books are denser and more advanced than Campbell, so study them only after you have mastered Campbell and built your core practical skills. They are especially useful if you are aiming for an IBO silver medal, so many readers of this guide will probably not need to study them immediately.

Practical exams

1. Prioritise past papers. Most practical knowledge and skills come from past papers, because the IBO and national olympiads repeatedly test a particular set of skills. You can learn the same skills from textbooks, but that is often inefficient: you would need to work through several dense books, each specialising in a different field.

2. Biochemistry and basic chemistry. Read Chapters 2, 3 and 6 of Lehninger Principles of Biochemistry, and reinforce them by solving past-paper questions. You also need some basic chemistry; Ruslanbekov Ulukbek shares explanatory files and practice problems in his materials folder (linked at the end).

3. Physiology. Vander’s Human Physiology again, which also helps on the theory exam. Reinforce it with many past papers so you build the ability to connect mathematics with real biological phenomena.

4. Plant biology. Raven Biology of Plants is large and advanced. He does not recommend prioritising it, because it is very time-consuming; it fits better if you are already aiming for silver.

5. Past papers give the highest return on your time.

If you have only two months left to prepare, solve past papers. Do not spend all your time reading textbooks.

How to prepare correctly

This is where many students mess up, and where I made mistakes too. You should never just read a textbook and hope that it will be enough. Olympiads are not that easy or straightforward.

1. Take useful notes

Take notes on the chapters you read and the topics you study, digitally or by hand, whichever works better for you.

At first, I did not take notes because I thought I would remember the information without writing it down. I now regret that decision.

2. Practise active recall

You may learn something and later recognise it when you see a related question, thinking, "Oh yeah, I remember that." But recognition is not enough. The IBO will not always present information in a convenient or familiar way. You need to uncover what lies beneath the question and determine what knowledge you should retrieve and apply. That is why you must practise recalling what you have learned without relying on prompts or notes.

This does not only help you remember. It lets you apply what you know to unfamiliar questions.

3. Keep an error log

Create an error log in Notion or in a notebook.

Biology contains a finite body of information, and official IBO questions must follow certain rules and limitations. As a result, some ideas and question patterns may repeat. You therefore need to avoid making the same mistake twice. Record why you answered each question incorrectly, identify the topic it came from, pinpoint your weakest areas, and work on them deliberately.

He points to the SAT Question Error Tracker Notion template. It was designed for the SAT, but you can adapt it to biology.

4. Use spaced repetition

Humans naturally forget information, so learning new material is not enough, you must review it as well. Spaced repetition is efficient because it prevents you from having to relearn entire concepts while also avoiding unnecessary daily review. Before checking your notes, first try to retrieve the information from memory on paper or on your laptop. Then compare your answer with the source and identify what you missed.

He recommends the spaced repetition template shared on the UBQteen Telegram channel.

5. Learn your calculator

It is also incredibly important to know how to use a scientific or engineering calculator properly. You should learn how to calculate standard deviation and find a regression line using it. You should also know how to delete or correct individual values if you enter them incorrectly. These skills can save you dozens of minutes in many olympiads. Learn this before you start practising. YouTube exists for this.

Other olympiads worth entering

I also recommend participating in other olympiads. They may require an entry fee, but they can give you experience taking exams under real pressure and may help you meet other motivated students. Participation can cost up to approximately $50 for all of the olympiads throughout the year, so choose carefully.

  • British Biology Olympiad (BBO). Probably the most prestigious of the widely available online biology olympiads, though not necessarily the hardest. It does not rely only on deep factual knowledge; it also tests your ability to work with unfamiliar information and apply logical reasoning.
  • International Medicine and Biology Olympiad (MBIO). Its format is similar to Kyrgyzstan’s National Olympiad, so it is useful for checking your progress and getting used to olympiad-style exams. It runs through the Olympiad League.
  • Belarusian Online Biology Olympiad (BIO). Ruslanbekov Ulukbek strongly advises against it. In his words it is genuinely hellish, some questions are even worse than those in Kyrgyzstan’s Republic Olympiad, and it is extremely difficult to win a medal because many participants appear to cheat while the proctoring does not seem strong enough to stop it.

In Kyrgyzstan, a medal in BBO, USABO, the University of Toronto National Biology Competition or BIO may let you skip the first two stages of the National Olympiad. That rule is specific to his country; the details are on the testimonial page.

If I were starting from zero

Here is the order Ruslanbekov Ulukbek would follow to win a bronze medal from nothing:

  1. Read Campbell. Preferably the 13th edition, but the Russian version is the 11th, so choose what suits you. Master it. He would not spend too much time on biodiversity, though he would still memorise some of it. He would not memorise dinosaur eras and similar material, which you will probably only need in the Open International Biology Olympiad. Solve every end-of-chapter question, and especially the scientific skills exercises.
  2. Read the USABO presentations. Really helpful for strengthening theory and adding important information.
  3. Read Lehninger Biochemistry, Chapters 2, 3 and 6.
  4. Solve past papers from the national and online olympiads. BBO from 2022 to 2026, MBIO from 2022 to 2024, and Kyrgyzstan’s NBO papers from 2023 to 2026, plus the worksheets and other files in his shared drive. When you do not understand an answer, he suggests asking an AI chatbot to explain it and give you similar questions to consolidate what you learned. Check what it tells you against the official solutions.
  5. Then start solving past IBO papers. Break them down meticulously and use your error log, because solving problems without breaking them down afterwards produces almost no progress. Do not solve old papers (2008 and older). If you are short on time, start from the most recent and work backwards; if you have plenty, start from 2009 and work forwards. Two IBOs were held online because of covid: he recommends the Japanese paper but not the other one.
  6. Do it in this order. If you actually finish everything, you may expect yourself to become part of the team.

BiOGuide has the IBO papers with worked solutions in the BiOrchive, the topic notes in Notes @ BiOGuide, and an overview of the IBO itself on the IBO preparation page.

Links Ruslanbekov Ulukbek recommends

Will it be worth it?

At the end, you might wonder, "If everyone does all of this, then how am I supposed to win a medal?" The answer is that almost no one will actually follow through with it to the end. They may have other priorities, they may not have the opportunity, or they simply may not want it badly enough.

I hope this guide helps you avoid the mistakes I made, use your time efficiently, and move steadily toward the national team, and eventually the IBO. Good luck!

This article is based on Ruslanbekov Ulukbek’s own written guide, shared and published with his consent. If you competed in a Biology Olympiad and want to share your advice or your story, reach out to us; we would love to hear from you.