ISEF Reflections Part 2 (sorry this took forever lolz)
I had notes left over on this article that I had wanted to write last year, so here you go: some more advice on how to handle the International Science and Engineering Fair and some stories! This is just a medley of stuff I couldn’t fit in the previous article.
In the mornings, make sure you bring some snacks and stuff. It can be hard to leave activities or presentations to eat, and you’re booked from morning to night, so make sure you always have something on the go. I did protein shakes because I was in my healthy era.
Don’t pack extra study materials for ISEF outside of what’s relevant to your project.. I know it’s around finals/AP exams, but realistically, you’re going to be kept too busy to actually lock in and study during ISEF. Like, you can try to be a hero and study in weird locations like at your booth when you’re just sitting there waiting, but it ends up being really hard to focus and stuff.
As soon as you are told where your judging area is, identify the nearest water fountain and restroom. You need those to be accessible and you need to know where they are because you’ll be spending a lot of time in that judging room.
Get on the ISEF Discord Server beforehand and chat some people up. Talk about projects and random stuff so you have friends to excitedly meet up with once you get there. It also makes it a lot easier to get out of your shell once you get there because instead of feeling awkward at first, you’ll have something to do.
When it comes to the monetary value of awards, I’d advise not to care too much about these. It can be really hard not to, especially when college is coming up, and you’re stressed about how expensive it’s going to be. It’s fine to aspire to create a project that has the level of excellence of a $50k award, but realistically, the judging for ISEF is very qualitative, and that means that if all your judges don’t sell your project to each other during judging 1000% perfectly, you’re gonna get cooked. I don’t mean that in a pessimistic way; I just mean that there exist many variables that are out of your control, and that’s why it’s best to just put your effort into putting your best self out there, and not worrying about the results.
This leads into my next point: the anxiety of the awards ceremony itself. I honestly think they organized it such that everyone would feel maximal anxiety. If I recall correctly, they did Special Awards first, which isn’t where the big bucks are even at, for the most part. Then, they went, in typical awards show fashion, in reverse order of place for each category. I don’t remember if they called first place with 2nd-4th, or if they called them after all the categories’ 2nd-4th, but I’m pretty sure it’s the latter (in order to, again, maximize your anxiety). Then they go into the big big money awards at the very end. This is a whole process that takes hours and hours. I, personally, was extremely sleep deprived and horribly sick during my awards ceremony, so I slept during the whole thing which was nice because I was saved from the anxiety.
Here’s some additional resources on this topic:
Rishab Jain’s ISEF videos:
One thing to emphasize from these is to act like a human and not be a robot like everyone else.
Lavender and Lab Coats: search up “ISEF” in her search bar and bunch of good articles will come up.
