NYTimes: Intel Competition - Where Science Rules

CountingDown
Sat, 10 Mar 2007 11:34:10 +0000

Marian,
My husband went to Bx Sci in that same time frame. He was a math/science and debate guy, and Bx Sci at that time was the best way for the bright kids of working-class families to get onto the college ladder.

He did not do Intel (then Westinghouse, and told me that some of his teachers were disappointed that he didn’t. There was a culture of doing research then, but he says it was much tougher to get mentors, etc. He wound up at a NSF program in the South to do his research the summer between junior and senior years.

Blair starts with the kids in 9th grade to learn how to do lab/engineering work, and by junior year, they take a research design and senior project sequence. By then, they have learned to keep excellent journals, write resumes to seek out mentorships, etc. That institutional supprt really helps; we know someone who spent a summer doing research at NIH, but didn’t have enough time to write up his work for Intel because of EE deadlines, etc.