Greetings, As of late, I am a 9th grader in my 3rd quarter, and my goal is to get into Duke University. Does anybody know of any worthwhile STEM-related competitions that I should consider competing in? Thank you in advance.
There are the standard olympiads like AMC (competitive math), USACO (competitive coding), F=MA (Physics), USABO (Biology), USNCO (Chemistry)
Some team-based competitions like the Science Bowl, Science Olympiad, Ocean Sciences Bowl, ODYSSEY OF THE MIND, or Envirothon
MIT THINK Competition is very cool, and so is the Conrad Challenge (although it slightly more geared towards entrepreneurship)
Some smaller “international” STEM olympiads such as USAAO (Astro), NACLO (Linguistics, but it’s basically all puzzles and no linguistics involved) which was personally my favorite, or USGC (Geography)
Research competitions like Junior Science and Humanities Symposium, Davidson Fellows, or Regeneron STS (only for seniors though)
Hackathons and coding competitions (especially big ones like CodeQuest or ExploraVision) or Google Code Jam
Also others stuff like your local science fair (if you can make it to state and ISEF that is really good) and Imagine Cup hosted my Microsoft. Also, the Congressional App Challenge if your congressman/woman does that.
Robotics competitions like FRC or FTC, if you are interested
Also, if you do well in niche competitions like MathWorks Math Modeling Challenge, TSA competitions, TEAMS competitions, etc.
Also, its good to do something like Debate or Model UN as it shows skills that cannot be shown doing STEM competitions
You can dig though here for more https://www.competitionsciences.org/
There’s probably a butt ton that I am missing, but here’s a bunch to get you started. Don’t get overwhelmed; you must show excellence in only one or two of these if you want to show your spike through competitions.
I see; thanks for the helpful insight!