I see post after post with lists of, I assume, extremely prestigious awards. Siemans, Intel, many others. Are these all things that the kids are seeking out and applying for on their own? Are there high schools out there sponsoring these things? Our school has no debate team, and only this year started participating in science olympiad. I have no idea what an AP scholar or presidential scholar is. I have never seen reports of any kids in our school picking up these prizes. How are all these kids doing all these things?
Many awards are from particular sponsors, like the Siemens, Elks, boy Scouts. Some schools are very good at making the students aware of the competitions while other students need to find them on their own.
The difference between kids that get big national awards, and those that don’t is really answered by the question, they and their people do the groundwork themselves. Sometimes the work for big name awards is much too onerous for your average kid and not especially proactive parent. AP and presidential can be just googled. Sometimes districts have odd stuff that is purely local (gets you in the paper LOL) but means very little in the big picture. Relying on a school to tell you or your kid what awards to apply for is what sets the achievers apart.
My daughter does independent research and that is how she got to be an ISEF finalist. Her school has an engineering class and she did use part of that class time for her research but didn’t have a lab or a mentor or any of that. My younger daughter does not take the engineering class but will be doing her own research as well (not that it is a promise for ISEF).
Well, here’s an easy one – “AP Scholar” just means that the student has passed a given number of AP tests with a given score. There’s a whole range of options – the AP scholar has taken 3 AP tests with a score of 3 or higher. Then there are higher awards – for example, a “National AP Scholar” has taken a boatload of exams with scores of 4 or higher on 8. So nothing special except for test taking.
“National Merit” is pretty much the same thing – based mostly on getting a very high PSAT score when the test is given in 11th grade. (A few other requirements, but the majority of of those who qualify will move on to “Finalist” status).
@itsanadventure Thanks! I would love to hear more about the research your kids can do on their own. Is this literature review or are they doing original scientific research in your home? At a lab? Can you tell me more about how this works?
My sons’ school doesn’t really participate in any of the big name award stuff, but my son researched and entered several contests on his own or by forming teams at school. Once he did the research and proposed to enter, it wasn’t hard to find other teammates or a teacher sponsor.
He’s pretty independent about this stuff, so I don’t know the names of all the ones he did, but the most recent one, he and his team entered, a few weeks ago they had something like 14 hours to put together a project that was then submitted for judging. Although I was vaguely aware he was off doing this project with the team, I didn’t realize it was some sort of national competition until this week. They found out that out of approx 1000 team entries, their team made the final 6 and they’re being flown to Manhattan in a few weeks to present their project to determine the winner. Too late for college acceptance purposes (and he knew that when he entered, he’s just nerdy and likes this stuff), but the top three teams win some nice scholarship so their odds (1 in 6) of getting some college $$$ aren’t bad.
Long winded way of saying - don’t wait for your high school to sponsor stuff. Encourage your kid to research things she’s interested in and just do them.
@milee30 and @calmom Thank you both for the responses! I keep learning really useful information here! It would never have occurred to me that kids could do research on their own. I always imagined they would need a lab, equipment and a supervisor. Would you share anything about what kind of research your kids did? Also, milee, its so refreshing to hear about kids doing things that don’t go on college apps. Somehow, that statement just made me smile.
@gallentjill I will put the basics on here and then feel free to msg me if I can help more.
So my older daughter is at the end of a 3 year project on an improved way of diagnosing dyslexia. She researched, designed a screening, and has tested several hundred students. She has watched khan academy for most of the statistics work (although a friend of mine from elem school spent half an hour on skype explaining some of the stats stuff to her).
She is to the point now that she needs access to an fmri machine and plans on trying to get that done in college. She has started the patent process on her design.
My younger daughter will be working with soil contaminant clean up and will be doing it from home.
So the kids compete in regional science fair amd the difficulty of those varies a lot. We have a boarding STEM dual high school/college program in our region and those kids usually snap up all the awards. Top 5 projects overall move to ISEF. But top 3 in each category moves to state. From state top in each category moves to ISEF.
You will need access to scienteer (online). I know homeschool kids compete, so there has to be a way for everyone to get access to that.
PM me with any questions.
Also, I should clarify, Meta projects ( i think that is what they are called - reviewing other research) is not allowed. This needs to be actual research.
Thank you again everyone. @itsanadventure I will PM you. Your kids sound incredible! Our school never even had a science fair until last year. This year, I attended with my 6 year old. She did a small project and presented it on a poster board in the school gym. 6 kids had projects showing how plants drink water and there were several volcanos. At the end of the day, they gave out ribbons from party city as prizes. So all of this is very far from my realm of experience.
@gallentjill my daughter’s first science fair she qualified for ISEF. We didn’t even know what it was.
@itsanadventure Wow! I bet her project wasn’t sticking white carnations into food coloring.
“It would never have occurred to me that kids could do research on their own. I always imagined they would need a lab, equipment and a supervisor. Would you share anything about what kind of research your kids did?”
He’s a math and computer nerd, so the only thing he or his teams ever needed was a meeting room with computer(s), white boards and general office supplies. Some of the contests required a teacher/sponsor adult, but not all.
The one that his team just placed in the finals in is sponsored by a professional society of mathematicians. The teams are given a “real world” type problem to address and the team has a certain period of time to assess the problem and propose solutions. The best solutions and use of mathematical modeling win. There is also an added prize for the best use of programming or coding in the solution, which DS is excited about because he thinks the code he wrote was strong.
I’m trying to describe it without outing him, but if you PM me, I’ll give you details.
Both boys sometimes like to enter in robotics type contests and for those, they can do the work either at the local Fab Lab or our business. We have all the basic soldering, etc equipment at our business but the Fab Lab has all that plus C&C machines, routers, laser printers, etc. It’s an awesome community resource. Pretty sure none of the robotics stuff my kids did was high level enough to be of interest to colleges (and DS didn’t put it on his app), but it’s fun for them. Kids who get really into the robotics definitely have opportunities to find and compete in contests if they want to, though. It’s a pretty hot field.
And if your kids want to do research, they can create their own project. It wasn’t a formal contest or anything, but DS was really interested in some advanced math concepts and asked for a lot of those books for Christmas a couple of years ago. I felt like a horrible mom getting him those books, but he seemed happy. He read them and used them to develop his own project using the concepts he learned.
This stuff is probably easier if your kid is interested in something that doesn’t require a lab, but if your kid needs a lab, I’d think there would be ways to arrange that. Neither of my boys was interested in science fair projects but I know several friends’ kids who did science fair projects requiring a lab and they were able to use a school lab or in a couple of cases the lab at a local hospital.
@gallentjill – keep in mind that a lot of these kids are strongly self-motivated and self-initiated. Yes, some of them also do have the good fortune to be in schools where these sorts of research projects and opportunities are well publicized and supported — but there are plenty of kids who are figuring it all out on their own. The internet obviously opens a lot of doors when it comes to finding out stuff. I remember when I was age 14 applying for a summer research lab program for high school students - which I didn’t get accepted to – that was back in the late 60’s and I have no clue how I even found out about the program, but somehow I did. But these days it would be a matter of a Google search - “summer research programs high school students” pullls up 1.2 million results. “High school science research projects” yields more than 2.7 million results.
I think it’s useful for you as a parent to be aware that these opportunities exist, but not something to try to push or nudge a child to do if there isn’t already an underlying passion or consuming interest.
@calmom I understand what you are saying. My D1 had no interest in any STEM subjects so this never came up. D2 on the other hand has a real passion for science and bio in particular. I think she would have loved to participate in something like this – she is doing research now in a lab in the city. But it never occurred to any of us that kids were doing these things on their own. Its wonderful the some kids are self motivated enough to find these opportunities for themselves, but I think its still fine to point kids in the direction of something they may not have thought of. In our town there were no science fairs or competitions for kids to see as they were growing up. We never saw notices of anyone winning these awards. I think its a mistake to think the every likely kid will simply come up with this idea on their own and if they don’t it means they don’t have the motivation.
I think it also probably helps if others in the family have some science background or interest. I have none. When my kids showed a talent and interest in theater, I knew exactly how to help them pursue it.
Take a look at engineergirl.org. It lists many contests and has helpful links.