Compete

Preparation guide

How to prepare for Regeneron ISEF

The world's largest pre-college science research competition, reached by winning your way up through affiliated fairs.

Elite · Grades 9 to 12, or equivalent

Competition details and how to enter Official website

Where the points actually are

ISEF is won at the local fair a year earlier, not in the week of the finals. The two things that most reliably separate advancing projects from stalled ones are a question narrow enough to answer properly, and paperwork submitted before the research starts rather than after. Judges are doctoral-level scientists and they will ask what your controls were and what your data does not show.

Topic breakdown

01Finding a question
The strongest projects answer a small, specific question well rather than a large one badly. Read recent papers in an area that interests you and look for the sentence that says further work is needed.
02Review board paperwork
Human subjects, vertebrate animals and potentially hazardous biological agents all require approval before you begin. Retroactive approval is not available and projects are disqualified for this every year.
03Experimental design and controls
Judges probe controls, sample size and confounds first. A modest experiment with proper controls beats an ambitious one without them.
04Statistics
Know why you chose your test, what your error bars represent and what your p-value does and does not mean. Being unable to defend your statistics is the most common way strong projects lose.
05The interview
Judging is a conversation, not a presentation. Practise explaining your project in one minute, five minutes and fifteen, and practise saying what you would do next and what went wrong.

A study plan that works backwards from the date

  1. 12 to 15 months out Read broadly, pick an area, and find a mentor if your project needs lab access. Many students underestimate how long finding a mentor takes.
  2. 10 months out Narrow to one answerable question. Write the methods section before you run anything; if you cannot write it, the design is not ready.
  3. 9 months out Submit review board paperwork if your project needs it. Do this before collecting a single data point.
  4. 5 to 8 months out Run the experiment, including the pilot run you will inevitably need to redo. Keep a dated lab notebook from day one; judges ask to see it.
  5. 3 to 4 months out Analyse, write up, and build the board. Have someone outside your field read the abstract and tell you what they understood.
  6. Fair season Practise the interview with adults who will interrupt and ask hard questions. Local fair, then regional, then state.

Tips that come from the format itself

  • The affiliated fair deadline is your real deadline, and it is usually much earlier than the ISEF date suggests.
  • Keep a dated, handwritten or timestamped lab notebook. It is required, and judges do read it.
  • Choose your category carefully. The same project entered in a crowded category and a thin one has very different odds.
  • Judges reward students who know the limitations of their own work. Volunteer what your data cannot show before they ask.
  • Special awards from professional organisations are a second, largely independent chance at recognition, and many students ignore them.

Practice resources

Past papers and official materials

  • ISEF finalist project database

    Searchable abstracts of past finalist projects, published free by Society for Science. The best possible calibration of scope and quality.

Videos worth your time

Skills this builds

  • Experimental design
  • Statistics and data analysis
  • Scientific writing
  • Literature review
  • Presenting to expert judges
  • Project management over months

Read what other students said about preparing