EPTOn April 15 2013 00:53 Chocolate wrote:
@ Loser777
I guess I'm in luck because I will be doing drug-related research, some of which probably involves cancer, at a local company. I'm going to mainly be working with someone who is a lab (or bench, can't remember the name) chemistry PhD, so I guess I should just do what he asks of me for a few weeks and then ask if he has any good ideas/would be willing to help with a science fair project? If that doesn't work out I'll approach the local university. I'm somewhat excited about the lab where I'm interning because it is a new field of study, and many of the finalist projects are in interesting new fields or are just crazy complicated (how the hell did that kid design a motor to run off surface tension??). I don't even want to strike out on my own anymore. I still need a lot of luck, haha. Since you probably knew other people who submitted to Intel STS, if you have a good topic and a paper with substance, are you pretty much guaranteed semifinalist?
@ Loser777
I guess I'm in luck because I will be doing drug-related research, some of which probably involves cancer, at a local company. I'm going to mainly be working with someone who is a lab (or bench, can't remember the name) chemistry PhD, so I guess I should just do what he asks of me for a few weeks and then ask if he has any good ideas/would be willing to help with a science fair project? If that doesn't work out I'll approach the local university. I'm somewhat excited about the lab where I'm interning because it is a new field of study, and many of the finalist projects are in interesting new fields or are just crazy complicated (how the hell did that kid design a motor to run off surface tension??). I don't even want to strike out on my own anymore. I still need a lot of luck, haha. Since you probably knew other people who submitted to Intel STS, if you have a good topic and a paper with substance, are you pretty much guaranteed semifinalist?
The problem here is, what defines a good topic?--it's obviously susceptible to the personal biases of the judge.? That's why I said that trying to do something different from the mainstream is important. Also, I think if you plan on doing a project with someone--let them know RIGHT AWAY. I'd be surprised if they didn't let your work what you were already doing into a project and it'd much easier for them to help that way. Keep in mind that your time is limited and that putting off anything is not going to help.
I knew a few people who submitted, and there are no guarantees. I submitted the same report (with a few revisions) to both the Siemens Competition in October and Intel in November of the same year. With Siemens I got nothing, Intel, Semifinalist. Of course, there are many who do well in both, or vice versa. Unless your work is truly world changing, I wouldn't count on odds of winning better than 50/50, and I definitely didn't.
I just think that planning for your life after you finished college, without even having spent a single semester actually studying, is bullshit. Because I think hardly anyone actually gets the job he dreamed of prior to studying, so it's often times a waste of time.
