<p>DD, a rising junior, has been interested in trying to participate in Intel and other science fairs since 8th grade when she won county and regional fairs. Her private HS doesn't participate in science fairs or connect kids with scientists to do research. Her area of interest is Marine Biology. She was able to find a local lab on her own and convince them to allow her to work there, so for the past year she has been learning the ropes. However not a lot of mentoring is happening there either. She wants to design a project of her own to try out this coming year, but with little supervision she knows she's operating in the dark. Mom and dad are not scientists so we can't help.</p>
<p>I wonder if Intel is realistic without support from a teacher, scientist or parent? In 8th grade when she competed at the state level in CA, she was awed by the level of professionalism of the projects that ended up getting awards. Part of it may have been that she wasn't the most brilliant kid or the most obsessed in the competition, but we also got the impression that most winning projects had a lot of professional guidance involved. </p>
<p>Is there a camp somewhere where she might get some mentoring, perhaps between 11th and 12th grades? The she could fiddle around next year with her own design and benefit after trying and likely failing from some expert guidance the following summer. I think that would make for a great learning experience. Has anyone's child participated in these sort of fairs? Any advice would be much appreciated!</p>
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Is there a camp somewhere where she might get some mentoring, perhaps between 11th and 12th grades?
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<p>Yes, it is called Research Science Institute (RSI) and is supercompetitive to get into. You can read a lot about it here on College Confidential and Google for more information. </p>
<p>Or she could do it on her own. That IS possible, but she will have to show a lot of initiative in any case. Good luck.</p>
<p>Does she live close to a college? She could try to get in touch with a prof there. She should also do some research about possible research areas. Look up the topics of award winning projects; that would be a start.</p>
<p>Yah, she should e-mail a prof who specializes in her field of interest. That was what I did for this summer. After a couple of emails were exchanged with a local LAC prof, I was able to secure a volunteering position. Your daughter should do this, too. I didn't know the prof at all. I had never met him. I wasn't familiar with his research nor had any experience in his field or anything else. Only by searching the website of the LAC did I come upon his work and decided to contact him. </p>
<p>From my experience, I would recommend that your daughter contact a prof at a LAC. They tend to be more receptive to students. Some LACs and colleges, in general, have free science summer research programs for high school students from certain backgrounds, like at my local LAC. Those are also the kind of colleges to look into that have emphasis on high school research.</p>
<p>D did UC Davis Young Scholars Program and had a great experience. Unfortunately, her experiment didn't work out, so it couldn't have led to an Intel project. But one or two of the projects done that summer did.</p>
<p>befuddled,
I've been thinking the same thing about my son! He won a local and participated in a regional competition, and is interesting in doing something for next year that's pretty challenging. </p>
<p>He's got (what seems to be) a great idea, and we're in the process of trying to connect w/a college science dept to see if he can use their facilities (and maybe talk to some of the professors/students about it).</p>
<p>Keep us posted on how your daughter's plans work out! We <em>have</em> to make some calls next week to get the ball rolling....
:-)</p>
<p>Summer programs don't always lead to an Intel project, although that is the goal of most of the students. The lesson learned there is that the hypothesis and project the student develops might not be able to be proven (hypothesis might be null). That is all part of scientific learning. Science research programs should be about learning about the process of research (and hopefully enjoying the process). Having results worthy of publishing a paper that is Intel worthy is not a guarantee. Most students submit their papers to Intel, even if the results are a dissapointment. Sometimes the essays for Intel can explain why the results were inconclusive, etc. Other times, the student faces extreme dissappointment (i.e. the equipment they ordered did not come in in time and they couldn't perform their experiment) and they had nothing to write about. That's part of scientific learning also... research can be extremely frustrating. It's not for everyone. Ellemenope's daughter is a great example of that. She had a great experience despite her frustration of not being able to obtain results. She'll probably make a great researcher!</p>
<p>Some of the programs are fully funded by grants. One that comes to mind is Clark Scholars/Texas Tech. Tuition, room and board are free, and the student is given a generous stipend at the end if they complete their work.</p>
<p>I agree with Tahoe. The goal of most of the summer science programs is to introduce students to conduct research not publish them. Few summer programs, such as RSI, will actually create opportunities for participants to conduct publish-worth/ ISEF research. The catch-22 is that to get into these programs, such as RSI, one must have significant research experience in the first place.</p>