<p>how competitive are these competitions? as in how many ppl apply, and how many get semifinalist/finalist/nat'l finalist/winners?</p>
<p>their websites don't say...</p>
<p>If you can place any rank, then your EC's are taken care of.</p>
<p>This is how the Seimens-Westinghouse STF operates:</p>
<ol>
<li><p>Kid needs a good EC because playing cello in the local orchestra for 12 years isn't good enough</p></li>
<li><p>Kid goes to local hospital/university</p></li>
<li><p>Kid's parents or friends get him job in forementioned institution</p></li>
<li><p>Job is in some sort of biomedical engineering lab</p></li>
<li><p>Ph.D.'s in lab have been working for 10 years on "Dystrophic Skeletal Muscle Cell Membranes Patched by Ploxamer 407"</p></li>
<li><p>Kid has no idea what the heck said report means</p></li>
<li><p>Kid helps out in lab by filling petri dishes and turning on the centrifuge.</p></li>
<li><p>Kid reads about Science Fair and says, "I'll enter the project that I've been working on"</p></li>
<li><p>Kid enters project that he didn't do and doesn't understand.</p></li>
<li><p>Kid wins because he had 6 Ph.D.'s and 12 Ph.D. candidates working on this project.</p></li>
<li><p>Kid sends project to the Ivy League where he recieves such accolades that they can't accept him fast enough.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>It's not always like this, but do you remember in 3rd grade when you did science fair and everyones project sucked because it was 3rd grade, and there was one that looked like it had been done by a high schooler (i.e. kid's parents)- it was probably the same kid.</p>
<p>lol damn. i went to UT this summer and did some ACTUAL research. but if other ppl submit Ph.D's research...that's not fair...LOL</p>
<p>also lol i know what u mean. other ppl at the university copied their ph.d's work and are sending it in.</p>
<p>I did research this summer as well at the Cleveland Clinic (3rd ranked hospital US News). I was in this big program where students were paired with mentors all throughout the hospital to do research. Most people were placed in biomed labs, but I was placed in a clinical office. We were all supposed to prepare research for the end of the summer. So what do you think happened? The kids in the labs whose mentors had been working 5 years on cell immunology just used that as their summer work, while I had to create my own study that didn't even compare. When I asked those kids to explain to me what they did, they couldn't. They didn't learn anything. These are the kids that win the Science Fair. My project was the level of a high school student, but that doesn't seem to be enough these days. This is one of the most false competitions I have ever seen. Its as if we were allowing players to use steroids, and celebrating them for it!</p>
<p>At least I got paid</p>
<p>OMG i know what u mean halopeno2. same thing happened w/ me. but i didn't get paid :(. we had to work w/ a mentor and then write a report, and mine was easy to understand cuz a high schooler did it. other ppls projects were, such as "Role of CDC2/Cdk1, a known RLIP76/RalBP1 interacting
protein, in Human Chronic Myelogenous Leukemia (K-562)." and i knew she did not do it by herself (if at all she did it.) and now she's entering Intel STS and i feel stupid. lol</p>
<p>Just ask her to explain in detail the reasoning behind her experiment. Then watch how she can't. Sorry if that wasn cynical, but I'm so mad at the other students who are going to look sweet for college because they're published in the New England Journal of Medicince</p>
<p>Some of this stuff you see in these reports is bogus. Graduate students couldn't come up with this on their own. I remember those kids in 5th grade whose parents did the Science Fair project for them, and won. Idiots.</p>
<p>---------Word-------------</p>
<p>halopeno2, I don't agree with that list of ten things you wrote about the kid who doesn't do anything and submits a project the Ph.Ds at his lab did without understanding it. I am currently working on an INTEL project and it is not at all like that. I've been at my lab for almost two years now, working full-time during this and last summer. Although my mentor assigned a project to me after assessing the capabilities of a high school student, I have been doing all of the work and research myself. So please don't think that INTEL Semi-finalists and Finalists do not deserve the recognition and praise they get -- It's a lot of work, you must put in a lot of time, and you have to really get what you are doing before submitting a research paper.</p>
<p>Nk18, you are in the minority. My point is, this organization only benifit kids who have unlimited access to cooprorate research facilities and mentors who can give them something to do.</p>
<p>Students doing this competition are cheating the entire educational reasoning behind their research. They never had an indepth study of the what or why behind their projects. Their mentors told them what to do and they just did it. It couldn't be more false.</p>
<p>dude...bio research isn't that hard...</p>
<p>math, on the other hand... O____O</p>
<p>RESPEKT!</p>
<p>Its all tough, to do at the "proposed level" that siemens or intel is suggesting as the high school standard of biomed research</p>
<p>That really is unfair. I'm surprised that high school entrants into these national science fairs are not interviewed in-person by an experience professional in a particular scientific field. That method could help to identify those projects in which students actually take a significant role, and eliminate obvious data moochers from contention. This whole Siemens-Westinghouse competition seems a little sticky to me.</p>
<p>Hell, atleast we can laugh when they are the ones failing in life cause they can't do anything on their own.</p>
<p>In science fairs you normally give a presentation, if the kids is any type of smart they'll understand the project though.</p>
<p>i disagree w/ the majority of the posts in this forum... a friend and i r currently performing schizophrenia research at the mt sinai school of medicine in ny. sure we work under PhDs and grad students and stuff like that, but we do the majority of the work for our research. our mentor is only really there for guidance, and has actually had little or no direct impact on our actual work. its unfortunate, and im sure that there r some cases where hs students basically hand in their mentors work, but i just had to speak out for those of us who actually poured real hard work and effort into our research</p>