<p>I was wondering how much of an impact receiving a regional finalist/semifinalist honor or even placing nationaly, could have on one's chances at Ivy League Schools. Do they rank in the "Outstanding EC" category? Can they save an otherwise lacking EC application? I have heard placing 1st or 2nd, in a competition like Siemens Westinghouse or Intel STS is almost an auto-admit, given probable congruitiy of success in school. Any merit to this rumor?
The reason I ask is because I'm currently working on a breakthrough scientific project which I will submit to all these competitions. I believe I have a chance at top honors or at least regional awards. Any help is appreciated!</p>
<p>I saw third place Siemens rejected from Harvard. In TOP 10 nothing makes you "shoe-in."</p>
<p>RSI is more or less a shoe-in at MIT... as for harvard, NOTHING is a shoe-in these days</p>
<p>I'm entering both of these contests this year and am kind of curious about a couple of things:
Is the judging based on merit of project, or sophistication of technique?
Is there a standard way to typeset your paper?(I use latex, by the way)
If there is someone out there who has done this before(especially a math entry), I'd love to hear how the contests are run.</p>
<p>And to pick on everyone's spelling.. I think it's shoo in. =)</p>
<p>zeta are u doing team or individual?</p>
<p>Individual</p>
<p>What's your project (just so I can kind of assess it)?</p>
<p>The judging method varies widely depending on the competition. Intel STS places a heavy emphasis on high school academic accomplishment (if I'm not mistaken I believe 70% of the evaluation comes from GPA, SAT, recommendations, etc.). Thus, since the project only accounts for 30%, as long as you have a solid method and somewhat novel idea, a semi-finalist award is basically inevitable assuming you have impeccable high school statistics. Thus, anybody making to the final round of Intel basically has an almost guaranteed shot at any school in the world.</p>
<p>On the other hand, Westinghouse takes into account ONLY the quality of the research paper. Thus, a high placing student into Siemens would not necessarily be admitted to a top ranking institution since it does not require academic success to be successful in the competition. However it does undoubtedly help with admissions.</p>
<p>Information on formatting is found on their respective websites.</p>
<p>Thanks for the info veggz.
Docta: I'm working on a few cases of the Buchsbaum-Eisenbud conjecture: Given a finite length quotient R/I (R is a polynomial ring generated by n variables, I is an ideal), the i'th syzygy of R/I must have dimension at least n choose i. Unless you're a commutative algebraist, I don't know how well you'll be able to "assess it"(whatever that means), but I just had to say my spiel-it sounds so cool.;)</p>
<p>What's AMD?</p>