<p>Things like this seem like they are only avaible to a select few. When i was looking for a mentor I did not have connections but emailed ppl to try to study with, the end of it came out to no mentor, so I taught myself like I had been doing for the last few summers. I ended up doing a project on the probability for photons to undergo quantum tunneling and did everything by myself at home. Unfortuanetly it is not of the caliber of Intel stuff, but I did get it published, so it goes to show that if you are persistant and work your butt off (I had been doing studying and doing projects every summer since 7th grade) you can accomplish something despite opportunities.
I mean this as advice for others who do not have the opportunity to do things like this, just work hard by yourself and you can accomplish anything and if you effectively display this in your app I sure you can impress the adcom.</p>