Application Acceptance Criteria 2000
Submission of an Application to the California State Science
Fair does not guarantee acceptance to the Fair. The Fair has
always rejected applications on the basis of inappropriate content and
for violations of Fair regulations. Projects which are substandard
(poor quality) or incomplete will also be rejected. The basis for this
judgement of quality is exclusively the Application Form and Project
Summary on its reverse side, particularly the Project Abstract. The
California State Science Fair does not consider other submitted
materials or awards won at affiliated fairs.
The following is the official list of acceptance criteria:
- Acceptance to present a project at the California State Science
Fair requires the approval of an Application submitted by the
student(s).
- Applications without a Project Abstract will be rejected without
recourse to appeal. Each student on a team project must complete
his/her own personal Application, but the Project Abstract need only be
supplied by one member of the team. As long as the Abstract is
provided by at least one member, other members of the team may choose
to provide or omit the Abstract without penalty.
- Abstracts must demonstrate a level of knowledge and investigation
that is appropriate for the grade of the student and discipline and
which is beyond what is considered common knowledge. In other words,
the investigations must demonstrate knowledge that is not found in
middle or high school textbooks.
- Abstracts must communicate ideas effectively, use standard
English, and be legible.
- The methodology and experimental design should be appropriate for
the student's grade and discipline, and should include the following
where appropriate:
- experiments are appropriate to achieve the stated objective;
- the sample size and/or number of trials is sufficient for
projects where replication is necessary to establish
validity;
- the statistical analysis is appropriate for the students'
grade and discipline; the conclusion is relevant to the
stated hypothesis.
- Projects which are merely demonstrations, display collections,
and literature searches are generally not acceptable. In order to be
acceptable, the student must use the demonstration, collection, or
search results, to extract new information not previously known to the
student.
- Applications may be rejected for failing to satisfy the rules of
the Fair.
- The Application fee is not refundable if the application is
rejected.
- All rejected Applications will be reviewed by the Director of
Judging and are subject to appeal (with the exception of those
applications which do not contain an Abstract).
Students, parents, and advisors should be aware that these acceptance
criteria are not intended to limit the number of participants but
rather, by requiring higher standards for project abstracts, to improve
the quality of the Fair and to ensure that all participants are able to
effectively communicate their projects to the judges. Only a small
percentage of Applications have ever been identified as likely to be
rejected. Every Application so identified this year will be contacted
in a timely manner as described in the Calendar on pg. 9, where the
process of appeal is also described.
Last updated:
Fri Jan 28 19:37:39 PST 2000
California State Science Fair
/
Acceptance Criteria
/
CalifSF@usc.edu