<p>uh oh
I'm only going to start this July; my summer program is 7 weeks...
looks like i can only spend 2 or 3 months...have ppl been able to win at least semi-finalists w/ this time?</p>
<p>Depends on what you are doing. If you work for that short a time, some serious questions as to who did the work are going to arise. You can't really do PhD level work in 3 months. But, I don't know, maybe someone did win it after 3 months of work. However, most people who've been doing this realize if you just BSed it.</p>
<p>It would definitely boost your admissions chances and would pretty much guarantee you acceptance to average colleges (unless you have very horrible grades and SAT which you probably don't)</p>
<p>shouldn't INtel/Siemens be high school level?
why do we have to do phD level work for it? (although I heard everyone who wins have graduate level b/c their mentor "guides" every step and does a lot of work for them)</p>
<p>It is not phD level work. A phD takes 4+ years to complete working full-time. It is not even M.S. level work. It is more like University honors level work.</p>
<p>Lots of Intel and Siemens finalist were rejected/deferred from HYPSM this year. Go read the "who got admitted" threads. It's not an auto-admit anymore at the top 4-5 schools.</p>
<p>I would consider curing Cancer PhD level. Honestly. Most of the kids who are in the top echelons of these kinds of competitions have projects on stuff like that. It's really hard to get noticed if you don't. My project literally is PhD level work. I won't get one, but I'll be published in peer reviewed journals. I find it hard to get people to listen to my project with that kind of work, just because its not cancer. And, it is true that a lot of kids get their parents or mentors to do most of the work for them, its unfair, but they get away with it. I'm not one of them, you can look at my project and tell there's a lot of stuff that can be improved.</p>
<p>At my high school there was a team of 3 people who did summer internships at Cal State and ended up going all the way to Finals then winning it in 2 months of work only, so it is possible (Jay Duauhdiuadhauh and crew, if u wanna look them up)</p>
<p>took me 9 weeks last summer, 40+ hours a week
just me and a computer</p>
<p>of course, a couple of months before that to figure out what the hell i was doing</p>
<p>I'm no genius and you don't have to be either to make semifinalist. be creative. I didn't have access to an expert in my field. nevertheless I made some stuff up that was original but only sort of worked and i think thats what mattered in the end.</p>
<p>it helps, provided you're solid everywhere else
i applied to 4 schools - mit, harvard, stanford, and cornell - and got in.</p>
<p>can more winners share how long their project took them?</p>
<p>for those people who are planning to submit stuff to intel sts and siemens, how long is your report. They allow you 20 pages to explain the research but is it necessary to fill them alll up?? thats a lot of research, considering a lot of published papers in nature, PLoS, etc are only about 5 or so pgs typed in MSword. lemme kno what you think.</p>
<p>Yes, but those papers are single spaced and are in size 6 font or so. Size 12 font plus double spaced plus title page/abstract/references/necessary requirements can easily exceed 20 pages if you try.</p>
<p>That being said, no, it isn't necessarily to fill them up. Don't write jargon just to reach the allotted 20 pages. At the same time, discuss everything such that your arguments/hypotheses are intellectually sound.</p>
<p>tachobg, which one did u chose? very impressive</p>
<p>it seems like there is a HUGE boost for intel finalist, whereas semifinalist is not nearly given the same boost, although it is very nice to have. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I heard that ALL intel finalists from the last admission cycle were accepted into Stanford (with likely letters).</p>
<p>My friend had decent grades (93 gpa, 1360 SAT), was a semi-finalist - it wasn't big enough for him to get into his top choices (Ivies) or even UVA/Emory. But I'm pretty sure it helped him get a guaranteed transfer to Cornell.</p>
<p>A semi finalist in our school got an full ride to Stanford. So it depends on the quality, knowledge/depth of your research.</p>
<p>How did he get a full ride to Stanford? I'm pretty sure Stanford doesn't give scholarships based on academics...</p>
<p>^I'm wondering that too. I heard a semifinalist at my school got a full ride to Stanford too about two or three years ago.</p>
<p>did all the semi finalists and finalists cure some crazy disease or something? or were there some winners who had research that didnt have a real world application/impact?</p>
<p>"Kids in my school start in summer of 8th going into 9th, spend the academic year working on multiple presentations that culiminate in the final project, so yeah 3 + years total."
Wow... it sounds as if you have a really good school if you were informed about these competitions in 8th grade. I wish that I had opportunities like that!</p>
<p>most winners, while haven't worked for 3+ years, worked in a university professional lab for their project.</p>
<p>not just most, almost everyone (saying almsot is just to prevent some rare exceptions)
so...life is unfair :(</p>
<p>Siemens Regional Finalist last year. 20 page math paper. Basically it's proof after proof. The last 2-3 pages were graphs and data from a computer simulation that I ran. Tip, don't type in MS Word. It looks ugly. Learn to use LaTeX. Yea, I had a math professor who mentored me and helped with some of the proofs. Also, judging from the other finalist at my region, I'd agree with screwthepc.</p>
<p>Edit: @XCsupremacy, I doubt my research had any real life impact...it's almost purely theoretical.</p>