The International Philosophy Olympiad (since 1993) for high school students, aims to bring about an appreciation for the subject and to foster critical thinking among the youth. It is organized by the FISP (an umbrella organization for all philosophical societies around the world) and there is an ever-increasing group of philosophy teachers from various high-schools across almost 30 countries, which assists the FISP in organizing the IPO. India began participating since 2008 (Romania) and then every year since. We have now established a tradition of earning at least one medal each year (Results). More information on the organization of the International Olympiad can be found at the official site. Details about the nature of the competition are available on the IPO page.

The pattern of the Olympiad

Final results of InPO 2018

The Indian Olympiad Program

We organize the Indian selection and mentoring program through our institution - Abhinav Vidyalay & Jr. College, Dombivli. This is a private, unaided ICSE school and thus does not have any funding for the program. It takes care of the costs incurred for making and distributing resources (mostly web-based), running the exams, awarding students, training & mentoring students and the back-office processing required for participating in the IPO. The travel & accommodation costs of each - the participant and the teacher - are to be borne by the individual. The costs of participation and stay during the event at the IPO venue is taken care of by the host institution/country. The work done at all levels by the organizers is voluntary and no charges/fees are levied from the student. The selection and training process is described in the further pages. Please see the links in the sidebar. (left)

Who is eligible?

Any Indian student, studying in a school affiliated to any local/national/international board, between Std 8 & Std 12, with any stream/combination of subjects, is eligible to participate in the Stage 1 of the Olympiad. The student should not have passed on from Std 12 to University. Older students (preferably above 16 yrs and studying in Std 11/12) are more capable of handling the subject. However, some student may be talented at a younger age or may develop a talent over the years, by beginning his/her IPO journey earlier. Students who have to give entrance exams after their Std XII (especially science stream) will find it difficult to focus their attention to preparing for philosophy between April-May and hence should decide their priority. In short, students should not take the training program lightly (although most of it may be online) since it usually takes 2-3 years of preparation for those who usually win medals.

The Indian Olympiad is now structured into three stages. Each stage is online (internet-based) and requires up to 2 hours per day of input from the participant. Students are selected from one stage to another based on their performance. The top two students in the last stage will make it to the Indian team. Also see the Schedule for the current InPO and the details of Stages.

There is no direct knowledge of philosophy required for any of the stages. The stages are designed as to mentor the student through the tasks. Students can enrol here. Enrolled students will then be sent instructions on how to access the tasks with the use of various tools. Students should also watch our blog or Facebook

 Please do not ask about past-papers etc. since a) this is not a typical competition,  b) the nature of the tasks keeps changing each year and c) there is enough training material and time provided for each task during its conduction.