Eight students chose the Dark Packet. None solved a single problem fully. But four of them produced "metacognitive diaries" so brilliant—so creative in their failed approaches—that they were invited to a special research program at MIT. The Dark Packet has since become an opt-in legend. Every year, whispers circulate that the Dark Packet will return. Every year, a few brave souls raise their hands. For all its intellectual glamour, NatPlus has a darker reputation. The pressure is immense. In 2018, a finalist collapsed from exhaustion during the Synthesis round. In 2022, a survey of participants found that 68% reported clinical insomnia symptoms during contest week.
By J. S. Moreau
On a rain-slicked Tuesday evening in a nondescript convention hall outside Chicago, three hundred teenagers sit in perfect silence. The only sounds are the scratch of pencils, the hum of industrial HVAC units, and the occasional, stifled sob. A timer on the wall ticks down from 180 minutes. natplus contest
Defenders counter that NatPlus is honest about the world. "Real research doesn't come with a study guide," says two-time champion Leo Zhang (now a PhD candidate in theoretical physics). "You get incomplete data, contradictory instructions, and a ticking clock. NatPlus isn't cruel. It's real."
For the uninitiated, the NatPlus Contest sounds like just another high school competition: a multidisciplinary exam promising scholarships, prestige, and a line on a college resume. But ask anyone who has made it to the National Finals, and they will tell you a different story. They will tell you about the maze. They will tell you about the "Dark Packet." They will tell you about the year the answer key was a lie. Eight students chose the Dark Packet
The infamous "Long Form." Students receive a 30-page booklet. The first 25 pages are source material: a fragment of a lost Greek play, a spreadsheet of epidemiological data from a fictional pandemic, a patent for a new type of battery, and a single photograph of an obscure 1927 political rally in Vienna. The last five pages contain four prompts. The catch: you cannot answer Prompt 4 without using information from Prompts 1–3, and the photograph from Vienna is a red herring (but no one knows which year they’ll remove it).
In 2015, a printing error occurred. The Day Two booklets for Section B (seats 112–145) contained a completely different set of problems—problems that, by all accounts, were impossible. One question allegedly asked: "Prove or disprove the existence of a finite number that is its own successor, using only the axioms of Zermelo-Fraenkel set theory and a haiku about entropy." The Dark Packet has since become an opt-in legend
A four-hour, 100-question multiple-choice exam. Sounds easy? The twist: each question has between 3 and 10 correct answers. Partial credit is a myth. You either circle the exact combination of letters—A, C, E, G—or you get zero. One former finalist, Priya Chandrasekhar (2022), describes it as "taking a Scantron test while someone randomly changes the locks on the answer key."
