<p>Has anyone ever done this competition? is it really time consuming/is it worth it? any comments would be awesome! thanks!</p>
<p>I'd like to know more about it as well. It looks interesting.</p>
<p>so...anyone?</p>
<p>My friend did it the other year (national finalist, won 15k), and I plan on doing it this year.</p>
<p>If you're looking for an easy competition, I'm sorry to say that there aren't. While your chances at succeeding at the YES competition may be higher than others, it's because the competition is relatively new, there are fewer applicants, and the competition is so specific (epi vs. general science). </p>
<p>I'm sure the competition would be worth it, and I'm sure that you cannot succeed without having a good, solid project. You'll probably have to be good at statistics and have a generally reputable population size in mind. The design of the project would be, in my opinion, the most daunting task (as opposed to carrying out the project). You have to select a specific or non-specific population (considering available size), find something good to research on, think about gathering and analyzing the statistics, and, most importantly (hoping everything turns out the for the better), convince other epidemiologists that your study is legit with the available and potential data--and that's only thinking about the project.</p>
<p>is it the kind of project where you need to do research with a college professor or is it something you can do at home if you spend enormous amounts of time on it?</p>
<p>I would say moreso with the latter, although I may be wrong. Most researchers don't do epidemiology; usually people that have their MPH do it. If you look at the abstracts of previous national projects on the site, I think you'll find that you could definitely do it at home (provided you have access to a study group) as long as you know enough statistics such that you can analyze your data from many, many angles.</p>
<p>I think finding a good topic to research on will take a lot of time. If you have a local epidemiology center where you live, visit and check them out. I'm working under this epidemiology portion of the state this summer, so I kind of lucked out.</p>
<p>Does YES have a website?</p>
<p>yes YES has a website. just google Young epidemiology scholars competition and you'll find it</p>
<p>thanks !</p>