whats the deal with
ISEF vs. siemens?
Can anyone answer this? 
And to add on, how much would winning a statewide piano competition be worth? 1st chair in the most prestigious division of regional youth orchestra for, say, violin?
Okay, attempted answers to you people’s questions…
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whats the deal with ISEF vs. siemens?
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They’re actually pretty different. The siemens/STS competitions are paper only in the first stage to become regional finalist/semifinialist. ISEF is all about science fairs, from the regional to state to international (mostly USA) level. In Siemens, you submit a research paper to the competition- approx 1500 papers are read through per year. About 200 or so (I think) become semifinalists, and 60 are regional finalists. There are 6 regional finals throughout the United states. At each final, you are interviewed by a panel of judges who know everything about the field of your research, and one team and one individual project advances to the national final (so 10 projects).
ISEF is a science fair group. You start with the regional fair, then state, and then the ISEF fair. You get to ISEF by winning “best of fair” at either your regional or state fair. Typically, there are about 12 or so regional fairs, and 1 state. From each fair, 4 projects go to ISEF. Once at ISEF, you compete for awards. In this list, “1st place” refers to a category award, essentially best in category. There are approx 40 categories I think.
** In my personal opinion, Siemens is rightfully ranked about ISEF Category first place awards simply because of the higher difficulty required to achieve that status. This is because in Siemens, the judges in your category know everything about your field. The people who read your paper have a good understanding of your topic. Furthermore, the criteria for Regional finalist is not broken down into categories. Everyone competes with each other. In my opinion, ISEF is also more of a crapshoot. Certain categories are much much more competitive than others. Furthermore, a lot of the projects that went directly to ISEF from a regional fair fail to compete that well… **
Depends… Are you talking about the national competition, or just state/regional level? I’ll tell you that the regional/state level don’t really mean very much at all as far as awards go, even if you won 1st. I’m not quite sure about the national awards though, although I’d think they’d rank decently high. The primary problem is that FIRST awards tend to be split among a large team, which in a sense decreases its “prestige”. 3-4 for state, 5-7 for national, depending.
Actually, this will do you pretty good. Demonstrated music excellence (like you mentioned) adds a lot to an application. It essentially says that you don’t just “play an instrument”, but rather than you’re passionate and dedicated to playing music. I’d say 6-7 on the list, but only given that you have strong academic EC’s/awards.
If you win Worlds or get Inspiration in worlds for FRC, that looks decent. VEX iirc isn’t really looked well upon.
These awards are ridiculous.
There are probably like only 5000 winners combined of #6 and up
^that’s why they’re special ;).
The people who win these are truly impressive. I’ve come close, but Junior Year I definitely will be ready to try.
^go for it!
Something prestigious is getting a gold or even a silver at the International Mathematical/Biology/Chemistry Olympiad.
does AIME help at all?
how about 25 ap’s with all 5’s?
how about JV sport - but the #1 JV team in the country?
25 AP’s all with 5 is crazy.
How about 7’s on all the IB Exams?
bump for relevance.
What about directing a region wide robotics camp at a college campus?
how bout J camp? i would give it a 6 or 7?
sounds like we have a lot fo questions but no answers…sigh
Is it just me or does anyone else feel extremely left behind for not having any awards or acheivements listed 4 and above?
^Not really.
^^ I don’t know, I know compared to most the people here, I don’t have those hard core achivements, however, for me an awesome achievement would be getting a collection of short stories published 
Bump b/c this is a useful thread.
What defines a <em>successful</em> business? How much more “successful” would it have to be to reach score of 9 or 10?
There is a frosh at Stanford this year from Massachusetts who had his own multi-million dollar business in online advertising. He still runs it and took a quarter off to run it this year.
I’d say that would be a 9 or 10.
What about placing first in the state on the state wide math competition? Is this a 4?