First-time Siemens/Intel Applicant

Pre-College Issues High School Life
41

<p>Someone had asked about how many people submitted projects...</p>

<p>From a press release for the Siemens for 2007 Competition:
"1,641 students registered to enter the competition this year with a record number of projects submitted, including a 9% increase in team projects. A record 295 students in 34 states were named Semifinalists. In addition, 95 students were named Regional Finalists..."
[30 are named Regional Finalists for individual projects; 65 are for team projects. 29 people were National Finalists -- 6 individuals and 23 team projects.]</p>

<p>From Intel's press release:
"This year’s [300] semifinalists were selected from 1,602 entrants hailing from 45 states, Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands."
[40 are named finalists.]</p>

42

<p>For international students residing in America, what are some prestigious competitions for tenth graders and above? Because I have two projects I made on my own in Australia (The concept of mentoring is unheard of) which are both I think quite good and I am now moving to a Northeast boarding school where I'd like to elaborate and submit these papers. </p>

<p>sorry for the tangent, didn't want to start a new thread.</p>

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<p>To clarify: there were 23 Siemens National Finalists who were members of team projects. Sorry!</p>

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<p>


</p>

<p>Don't worry about it. People "steal" projects all the time. You would be disadvantaging yourself if you didn't do so yourself.</p>

<p>I mean really...did you all honestly think high schoolers could do 100% of their own research on something significant?</p>

45

<p>hi ,my son is a senior in high school, he started up with guitar about 2 yrs ago and quite talented plus guitar lessons.
the local college wiilling to offer him scholarship, however he wants to be out of town,</p>

<p>Any thoughts about school in co. with jazz/ music ed emphasis and also ideas on some moderate price universities. </p>

<p>we are just getting started, ?university of houston texas, bolling green in ohio?</p>

46

<p>^ wow.. really random question there. You would have a LOT more success with your question if you posted it somewhere other than a science research thread. </p>

<p>Aerialblue, you quoted the wrong person =p the question was asked by Blueducky, not me, but thanks for answering. I was wondering as well. However, i seem to be pretty dubious now that you can simply take a professor's research project that you simply helped him do. (i'm not talking about when a professor gives you a project to do) I've seen a huge mix of responses on that question though, so does anyone else know?</p>

47

<p>The problem with Aerialblue's approach is that for both Siemens and Intel, a rigorous Mentor supplement is requested. And if you take a look at the questions posed to the mentors, it's obvious that both competitions are concerned with how much of the work was solely the student's. Thus, as long as your mentor is ok with giving you credit for everything you claim you did, you're technically fine. However, if what you say in your portion of the application doesn't match up with what your mentor says, it could be rather suspicious to the reviewers.</p>

<p>And just as a follow up, I personally know several high school students who have done fabulous research, with only a guiding presence from a mentor. It is not ridiculous to believe, as Aerialblue has suggested, that there are 300 highly motivated high schoolers passionate in math and science. In fact, those who end up going far/winning these competitions are usually those who have spent several years on their project, and are incredibly well informed in their discipline.</p>

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<p>^It's how most of them got there that breaks the back for those of us who didn't know about CC when we were in middle school to effectively "catch up."</p>

49

<p>An Intel semifinalist friend admitted to me that the only reason she probably got that far is at all is because her mentor heavily edited her paper (enough to essentially make it the mentor's own).</p>

<p>Another did research for his parents. You tell me what that probably led to.</p>

<p>On a whole though, I'd say that, by the Intel finalist level, they do a great job at rooting out those who had this kind of help in getting through the competition, particularly because there's all the extra required material submitted on your "potential to be a good scientist." </p>

<p>

That is ludicrous. Even if it being a "general rule" were true, no rule is more made to be broken than this one.</p>

<p>There is no excuse for writing in the passive voice. If you wouldn't do it in a heartfelt essay or a compelling novel, you wouldn't do it in a research paper. Research had to be performed by -someone-, so papers need to have personal voice, lest they lack the same luster apparent in some of history's greatest scientific papers.</p>

<p>In any case, I know some top scientists of our day even consider passive voice to be the mark of a weak paper, and all the good papers I've encountered stay far away from the passive voice.</p>

<p>As for papers being written by multiple authors, "we" is as much usage of the active voice as "I" is.</p>

50

<p>I've seen a racemic mix of both...</p>

51

<p>"My project is kind of tanking right now--
this other girl at my internship is giving me doubts about submitting my project
according to her, all we've done this summer is collect data for our professor and it's not really "our" independent project. we haven't done much analysis with the data/or conclusions were reached, but they were already deduced by our professor, etc.</p>

<p>I don't know if i should still enter "my project" anymore."</p>

<p>This thread kinda says you could. I'm not sure though.
<a href="http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parents-forum/39501-honest-look-how-intel-finalists-get-there.html%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parents-forum/39501-honest-look-how-intel-finalists-get-there.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>Sorry, I'm still a little confused. So to enter competitions, it depends on the research you do, not if the research was your idea or not?</p>

52

<p>S wrote his paper using "we." It is standard usage in the areas in which his research would be published.</p>

<p>Intel does use grades, coursework taken, SATs, etc. to "confirm" that a student has the background/ability to perform his/her research, etc. This year's Intel finalists were told that by a member of the staff.</p>

<p>S's mentor wrote a short-but-sweet letter. He made it very clear that S's work was original.</p>

53

<p>Okay, I'm definitely considering entering, but I have some questions:</p>

<p>1) You are supposed to submit your research as in research paper with an abstract, intro, data, analysis, etc, right?</p>

<p>2) Can you do research with human participants?</p>

<p>3) Is there any examples available online of the papers of past winners?</p>

54

<p>
[quote]

Sorry, I'm still a little confused. So to enter competitions, it depends on the research you do, not if the research was your idea or not?

[/quote]
</p>

<p>It gets even better than that. Sometimes you don't even have to do the project at all.</p>

<p>
[quote]
On a whole though, I'd say that, by the Intel finalist level, they do a great job at rooting out those who had this kind of help in getting through the competition, particularly because there's all the extra required material submitted on your "potential to be a good scientist."

[/quote]
</p>

<p>Sadly, this material is a poor indication of the potential of a given student to succeed in science.</p>

<p>There's a reason why I made my last post. Let me tell some of you high schoolers what really happens in college. These Intel STS, Siemens, etc. projects, all of these science projects, are oftentimes the primary factor for getting a student into Harvard, MIT, or whatever college they were able to get into!</p>

<p>Yet, once they come here, they proceed to flunk out of the basic General Science sequences, or classes on beginning Abstract Mathematics (ie. MATH 25 @ Harvard). I've seen so many former Intel Finalists and Siemens Regional Winners do so poorly in some of the science and math classes here, and then switch over to a relatively easy, "sell out" major like Economics or Applied Mathematics.</p>

<p>You'd think that people who did so well in these competitions would be at the top of their game, but sadly, these high school competitions are not like <em>real</em> research with tangible, meaningful results. It's become sort of a running joke that a lot of former Siemens/Intel people get into Harvard/MIT with their winning projects, and then immediately sell out to Investment Banking or whatever after finding out that they could never succeed as real scientists.</p>

<p>As you can tell, this is extremely outrageous to me, as I know a lot of highly intelligent people from high school, who simply weren't able to get themselves the connections and equipment to compete at the level deemed necessary by Intel or Siemens. They were relegated to state schools (so as you can see Blueducky, there is certainly a lot at stake here when you think about it). All of the <em>serious</em> undergraduate scientists and mathematicians that I know of, know what it takes to succeed at Intel/Siemens...and hence, none of them take those high school competitions seriously anymore.</p>

<p>That is not to say that Intel/Siemens kids will not continue on to become scientists. Certainly, some will.</p>

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<p>So maybe someone already asked, but are we limited to a single project entry into the science competitions (STS, Siemens, ISEF)? Can you send multiple projects to any competitions?</p>

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<p>STS can only be participated in once - as a high school senior. Siemens can be participated in multiple years, but if you are not a senior, you can only participate through a team project (none of the members of which necessarily have to be seniors). ISEF is essentially a science fair (albeit the best one in existence); you can participate annually without regard to your class year.</p>

<p>Within a single year, however, you cannot submit more than one project to -any- of them. There are also other non-age-related restrictions to watch for. In response to friedrice, for instance, any projects involving human subjects have to be approved beforehand by the Institutional Review Board. To cite another example, experimentation with any vertebrate animals makes your project ineligible for STS. You can find such information on each competition's respective website. (And in response to your first and third questions: 1) yes, for STS and Siemens; 3) only abridged versions.)</p>

<p>

lol @ trying to integrate orgo terminology into everyday jargon.</p>

57

<p>aerialblue, you can't deny that, in STS, for example, the percentage of Finalists who make it to that level on their own merit and smarts is tremendously higher than the percentage who do that and achieve Semifinalist status only. I didn't say Intel did a "perfect" job of figuring out which kids know their expletive; I said they did a "great" job. And "great" is indeed the extent of it.</p>

<p>None of the Finalists I know had issues in college like the ones you brought up. At most, a couple of them just chose majors that were intriguingly unrelated to their research categories, though none of those were even the "easy way out".</p>

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<p>Okay, so you can enter your project to a competition if you simply were involved with the project, even if it wasn't your idea. </p>

<p>However, i really doubt you can simply enter a project that you didn't do anything on. The competitions ask you to enter a project that you did research on. What is your source for that claim?</p>

59

<p>
[quote]
aerialblue, you can't deny that, in STS, for example, the percentage of Finalists who make it to that level on their own merit and smarts is tremendously higher than the percentage who do that and achieve Semifinalist status only.

[/quote]
</p>

<p>I don't even know how you could have logically reached that conclusion, but no, you can also have quite a bit of bogus Finalists' projects, for the simple reason being that the projects that make it far tend to be those that appear good or appear to have good results. Obviously, it's easier to have a better project if you have a willing mentor.</p>

<p>And also, the people that I know were former Finalists in their competitions. Oops.</p>

<p>
[quote]
I didn't say Intel did a "perfect" job of figuring out which kids know their expletive; I said they did a "great" job.

[/quote]
</p>

<p>Sadly, I'm going to have to disagree with you here as well. The problem is, at the high school level, most kids don't even know what real scientific research entails. They also don't even know what an Investment Banker is, what's a Hedge Fund, or the numerous other career opportunities available that any given high school curriculum simply can't emphasize.</p>

<p>Read the thread that Equilibrium posted - it's a really good thread on how the original purpose of these certain science competitions was twisted into a mere incentive for college applications.</p>

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<p>Perhaps I should clarify. You don't have to do anything substantive for your project. Read the thread that you posted. </p>

<p>I'm not sure if doing the *****work, and going through the exact instructions that a mentor has placed out for you really constitutes real research on your part.</p>