<p>oh .... woops, you all seem to have argued that point already ...... I replied to the first page ........ uh ........ <ahem> ............ nevermind.</ahem></p>
<p>That father's comments about his daughter just riled me, you know?</p>
<p>........ okay.....</p>
<p>There are many programs where mentors acutally mentor, and students do the work. Some of the more competitive programs are are partially or fully funded, which helps level the playing field for students who cannot afford to attend the more expensive programs. An excellent program, which is entirely funded by a generous endowment is called the Clark Scholars Program at Texas Tech University in Lubbock, Texas. The entire program including room and board is free. Plus, if the student finishes his/her project and paper to the mentor's satisfaction, he/she receives a $750 stipend, which many students use for airfare to/from Lubbock. They only accept about 10 students per year. Link to website: <a href="http://www.clarkscholars.ttu.edu/default.htm%5B/url%5D">http://www.clarkscholars.ttu.edu/default.htm</a></p>
<p>... Well, first off, I'm a senior who will be entering the ISTS. </p>
<p>While my school does have a very strong science fair program (which... has sadly been dying over the past few years since they cut the middle school program), I actually met my first mentor when my mother got me a phone number of a professor at OSU from one of her co-workers. My mother has a B.S. in Accounting and my father has a Ph.D. in Applied Mathematics. This professor didn't want to take me at the time because I was a 7th grader, couldn't drive, and presumably had no clue what the hell I was doing. My 5 page review of literature written from searching "apoptosis" on the NCBI's PubMed website and the college textbook on Immunology she lent me convinced her that I could think. My first project was basically fed to me - but it was chosen because I expressed an interest, specifically, in T-cells. At the time, I couldn't even focus the microscope on the hemacytometer I was supposed to be using, much less count the cells in the grid. </p>
<p>My current mentor is a graduate student who still works in that lab who helped me focus said microscope in 7th grade. So yes, I've been working with her for nearly 6 years now, and even now, my projects are in large part the product of brainstorming from the both of us. We are on the cutting edge of virology, and what I do is largely affected by the resources that the lab can provide me, but over the years, my mentor and I have made sure that my project is a separate entity from hers. But as I've worked with my mentor in that lab and followed her research and the research of others in the field, I've become better able to direct my own path of research because I actually know what's going on, and I can articulate that very well. (You can't just ask for your own project. Professional researchers have a hard enough time figuring out what they want to do, without trying to come up with a project for you too.)</p>
<p>It takes most people a lot of time to be able to do serious research because of all the background one needs. I think I'm perfectly justified in saying that just about everyone who works in medical research once started out counting cells in a hemacytometer or using flow cytometry. No one likes to do it, but that's how everyone starts. I've done immunoflourescence and immunohistochemical staining myself lots of times, but only learned how to do a Western Blot and gel electrophoresis last year - and my first looked like the Loch Ness Monster.</p>
<p>But I have to say - while there are a lot of us who did our own research and have worked years to finally be able to understand and direct our own research, and we deserve to be lauded for it, I also have a lot of respect for those people who decided simply to do a project their junior or senior year and became semi-finalists. I personally know a semi-finalist who worked in engineering for 5 years and then decided to switch to biochem. While I don't think she actually submitted her biochem project, which she did at a University over the summer under the careful guidance of a couple proffesors, for ISTS, she did qualify to ISEF with it. This girl had absolutely no experience in biochem whatsoever prior to that summer. Yet she learned all the lab protocol and the background knowledge and the current research going on in order to be able to present her project that well.</p>
<p>Furthermore, the ISTS application is not just a science fair project. It also includes an stats application that makes applying to any college look easy, six detailed essays about your philosophy on scientific research, three teacher recommendations, one mentor letter describing how your research was actually yours in addition to the research paper. The ISTS doesn't necessarily look for the most amazing research project - it looks for students who have a passion and really want to pursue a career in research. That's why the prize is a scholarship.</p>
<p>So look at me compared to Ms. Ramakrishnan:
I got help from my mentor because I can't be unsupervised in the lab. While I knew what I wanted to test for I don't have the background to actually transiently transfect any of the cells I used (they were knockout cells, I did an add-back study of a protein I've been working with for 4 years). I'm not allowed by the SRC chair OR the University to actually infect the cells with the virus I studied (I watched my mentor do the infection), and I while I knew other lab procedures, I learned the Western Blot and gel electrophoresis as I was doing my project last year.</p>
<p>But the fact remains that I was there to do whatever parts of the experimentation I could do - that my first Western Blot looked like a Loch Ness Monster (yes, 6+ hours of benchwork in the lab come to nothing) - that I spent well over 150 hours on this project, that I had 5 years of experience in the field, and that I knew my project sufficiently well to articulate it in front of countless judges (no, I'm serious, I lost count) at my state fair and win 3 awards and 2 scholarships from it.</p>
<p>So many people don't understand that research is not something you do alone. That's why there are so many names appended to research papers. Simply put, not everyone can be an expert in everything. When I did projects in 9th and 10th grade involving immunohistochemical staining, it was not me nor my mentor who made the stains - it was another professor who worked in our lab: who we endearingly refer to as our "resident Stain-master." For my last project, both my mentor and I were learning virology at the same time (research takes you interesting places) with lots of help from the hall across the street because we actually work in a tumor immunology lab. And if nothing else, it was still that professor who afforded us the materials to conduct the research and gave us advice when we were stuck. It's truly a team effort. </p>
<p>So, quite frankly, it sounds to me that Ms. Ramakrishnan was simply being modest and giving credit where credit was due, just like I would in her place.</p>
<p>catshi06--
Wow! Hats off to you. I'm sure you will do wonderfully in college and beyond. The world needs more young people like you -- motivated, enthusiastic, and uncynical. And you write beautifully, too (although must confess that your details were a bit much for this 'bear of very little brain').</p>
<p>I am your fan!
M.</p>
<p>Hey catshi, you have a fan club!
.................. I want a fan club ...............</p>
<p>catshi -
I think you're awesome! I think aditi is awesome too, as I am her personal friend and worked in the lab with her for years. I agree with your assesment, 100%. There are all types of projects out there, and the original article give a pretty negative spin to a lot of hard work by a lot of people I know well. I understand the offense people have taken to it, but in general I think they cannot possibly have a complete understanding of these student's projects because they did not met the students, didn't talk to them about their research, didn't work side by side in labs with them. You can do it alone, but there is nothing wrong with having help in some circumstances. I doubt I will post on this thread again, as there are so many posts here that I find personally offensive to my close friends and myself, but I want you to know that I appreciate your post, and wish you the best of luck in all of your upcoming competitions.</p>
<p>I'm surprised you're not applying to Siemens, did you miss the deadline?</p>
<p>Wait a sec .... did anyone here work at Brookhaven or Stony Brook this summer?</p>
<p>Not this summer, but I did several summers ago (summer 2002 and summer 2003)</p>
<p>O_O Oh, thank you.</p>
<p>Um..... about Siemens, yes. I got an application for it last summer, but didn't recieve one this summer... and kept putting it off. By Wednesday I had decided that it wasn't going to be worth it to try to get everything together and to the post office. I had enough trouble getting my NMS app to my counselor by last week.</p>
<p>Well, this will be my last post until I crawl out of my burrow again for STS .... maybe I will have the honour [sic] of duking it out with you in Washington D.C. come March!!</p>
<p>I competed in Intel this year..... placed 4th in engineering.......</p>
<p>recieved no help.... from outside assistance....</p>
<p>though I did see a few 'helped' projects.......</p>
<p>"I remember reading a few years back that the best predictor of whether a student would be a Intel or Siemens finalist is whether one parent is a university professor. Access is certainly an issue."</p>
<p>The above from an earlier post expresses very well what we've seen in our area. The few HS kids who have gotten to do research with college professors are either children of professors or children of researchers in the private sector. Yes, the students had to put in the time and effort to carry out the project, but let's not think for one second that these kids were necessarily the cream of the crop of all the high school students in the area surrounding the university or lab providing the mentors. In other words, they were not selected to be mentored because of their superior intelligence or a special aptitude for scientific research; they didn't have to compete for the opportunity, it was given to them on a silver platter from their parents using their connections.</p>
<p>As several previous posters also pointed out, universties are quite busy providing research opportunities for their own enrolled students who are paying tuition. Unless a prof. is doing a favor for a colleague, why on earth would he want to work with a green high school student who would only be available after 3PM each day? Seriously, where we live, competition for everything is so intense that kids have to be on waiting lists for a year or more to have the opportunity to volunteer at the local hospital. I can't see how colleges could start taking in HS students to do research. They'd be flooded with requests and who would pay for the professors' time?</p>
<p>My son had no such connection with his mentor. However, the mentor lives in our community, and his son attends our h.s. So, this professor, who had had h.s. students from other areas in the past, was especially open to taking a student such as my son. Nevertheless, my son was the first ever in his lab to make Intel finalist, so I like to believe that it was just as much about my son's work as it was about the opportunity this mentor provided. And by the way, my son did his actual lab work during two summers. Only the written work for his project and article were done during the school year. </p>
<p>Also, regarding this idea that finalists are not the "cream of the crop", I can only respond, having met many of them, that by enlarge they are an unbelieveably impressive group.</p>
<p>Aditi, the girl quoted by the OP, is my roommate this summer! We're both currently doing research at the Yale medical school. And in response to the original post..well, it really doesn't say anything new. Even undergrads at Yale who first start working in labs are given projects by their mentors. Eventually, they learn enough to devise some changes to the original hypothesis and expand on the research. But is it really so surprising that many high schoolers do not come up with the original ideas and methodology for their projects? They run the experiment, analyze the results, write the conclusions, and branch out from the original hypothesis, but it takes a lot more background than AP Bio to come up with these stellar projects in the first place. </p>
<p>Even in actual science papers, there is usually only one person who comes up with the idea.. the Principal Investigator. All the other contributors are just that--they contribute to the project in every other way save for the idea. Do we really expect PI-level work from 17-year-olds? And when a 17-year-old is honest enough to "admit" (which in itself sounds guilty) that she didn't have the scientific background to come up with a project on the toxicity of nanoparticles, how fair is it for us to become outraged? She's one of the few who rightly actually acknowledge the fact that she had help along the way. </p>
<p>Intel is a competition that judges many other factors, from how well the paper is written, to the students' SAT scores, to the personal essays. It's an overall picture of a student's POTENTIAL as a scientist, not whether they've already made it there. There is even a question on the application to be filled out by the mentor: "How much input did the student have in coming up with the idea for the project?" Aditi is saying something that every Intel participant, including the judges, already knows. The rest of the world may believe these great biological revolutions are coming out of kids' basements, but that's just idealism speaking. And frankly, naiveté as well.</p>
<p>Luckystar: great response! In my son's case, it was just as you describe: he spent much preliminary time learning about the area the mentor specializes in, and then, in discussion with him, came up with a new angle. He then was given vitually complete charge over the project, under the guidance of a post-doc. He then wrote it up for publication himself (and did the revisions required by the journal), and was first author. The amount of work was huge, and then, add to that, the some 12 essays he had to write to submit it to Intel (and several for Seimen's as well).
And as far as the notion of projects "coming out of kids' basements", that is sometimes, though rarely the case. My son's good friend, the outright winner of Seimens and a finalist for Intel, did just that. Several other kids in my son's year, including I think the winner for Intel and several of the mathematics entries, also had projects that actually arose more completely from their own ideas.</p>
<p>Wow, this is quite a hot-button thread.</p>
<p>I did ISEF for two years. Never made it to international, but won awards at the regional level. My projects were my own, no team backing me up. I went to a school where I could have worked in a university lab and had a faculty "mentor", but I chose not to because I wanted the projects to be my own.</p>
<p>There are students who do everything on their own, and some of them take top prizes. There are mentored students who have integrity and wonderful projects, and weren't just handed anything, and some of them take top prizes. There are also "mentored" students who abuse the system, and some of them take top prizes too. I don't have a problem with a kid going to a university lab and doing some tech work on a faculty project - good for them for trying to increase their lab skills - I just have a problem with the same kid entering the faculty project in a competition.</p>
<p>What I discovered is that really good, hard judges can prevent the "abuse" phenomenon to a large degree. I admit that during sophomore year of high school I felt a kind of vindictive pleasure when the girl next to me, who had clearly just been handed a project and had been bragging to everyone else about how technically sophisticated "her" project was, got tripped up by the judges - she had a nice little script that sounded very impressive, but as soon as the judges started asking her questions that deviated from what she talked about in the script, she fell apart. Unfortunately, I also saw cases where the judges were easy, asked superficial questions that didn't test the depth of understanding of people's projects, and seemed bowled over by anything with an impressive title and a glossy backboard. I hope that the judges at the top levels of science fairs are rigorous enough to see the good student projects - mentored or not - for what they are, and see the ones that are abusing the system for what they are too.</p>
<p>Someone mentioned the Math competition analogy and I agree completely. I am not a math genius, but I do enjoy math competitions. I participated in the AIME and the UCSD Honors Mathematics competition. I didn't do particularly well in either. For the AIME, there are courses and summer programs that you can take that expose you to the types of problems and the level of problem solving that you will encounter on the test. I never did any of this. Would it have helped? I can only imagine so, because I took the AIME two years in a row and did much better this past year as a senior. I also remember when the math-genius who won the UCSD math competition was explaining one of the answers to the short-answer question that only he answered correctly. It involved logic centered around a mod-3 environment. I only had fringe knowledge of "mod" at the time and had certainly never solved a problem like that.</p>
<p>The point is that we would like these competitions, college admissions, and everything else in life to address our "intellect" and "potential," both of which do not necessarily coincide with our specific achievements. We all know about the not-quite-as-bright-as-the-smartest-kid students who work their butts off to get the highest gpa in their class, putting in many more hours to achieve slightly better results. Do they deserve it? I think so.</p>
<p>When I first saw AIME-level problems, I knew I was in over my head. I would like to think that with a lot of training, I would be capable of answering at least a few of the questions that I did not solve, but it was still fun to take a crack at it anyways. </p>
<p>I took practice SATs. Even though I am a mathy guy, I did not do as well as I should have done on the practice tests (although I thankfully did on the real thing). Do I deserve that? I still think so.</p>
<p>I think it becomes an issue when the Intel and Siemens kids are outraged at being passed over at Harvard for kids that never had the opportunity to compete, as we saw on the message boards this year. The idea that this competition encompasses all of the top students in the country is absurd. If the same student wouldn't have been admitted without Intel, then he likely shouldn't be admitted just because of a high Intel placement. Many believe it is an automatic admit.</p>
<p>It may very well be the case at Harvard. However, at many lower ranked schools like Rice, WashU the high placement is highly desierable from the admissions as well as merit $.</p>
<p>In addition that factor plays in many private scholarships as well.</p>