<p>@LuoSciOly Great. Thanks again for taking your time to share more insight. Very helpful. </p>
<p>To any past RSI fellows specialized in biomedical research - Did your mentor contact you prior to the program? Thanks!</p>
<p>@lisalee8</p>
<p>This is tangentially related to questions 2 and 4. The projects you complete (or not) are not geared towards science competitions as they are in many other summer science internships. Maybe itâll work out for you and thatâs great, but thatâs not really the point. No one judges you harshly if youâre presentation at the end of six weeks is well, ehâŠ(personal story). </p>
<p>The main goal here is to learn how to research and be exposed to some amazing people (at work, lectures, fellow Rickoids) and other sciences. So donât get too hung up on your project, just try to absorb as much as you possibly can (of course work your butt off, but donât get preoccupied with the results)</p>
<p>In my case, I spent the vast majority of my time working with T-cells. And in the end when I had some pretty decent results, I was told that due to serious competition (t-cells are In) would I mind not presenting my results? please? And really since this project was several years worth of work to my mentor, and just 6 weeks to me, the obvious decision was to not present. I ended up presenting some lame bacterial transformation, and though I was pretty put out about it at the time, in retrospect thatâs not what mattered. I had learned soo much, just worked on a T-cell problem no one had the answers to (and come up with quasi-decent results), and made some very awesome friends.</p>
<p>So long story short, I guess the RSI experience is not the project you complete/donât complete, wanted to do/didnât want to do, its what you learn along the wayâŠ</p>
<p>also, @LuoSciOly whoa youâre putting a lot of effort into helping them :P</p>
<p>"1) Once youâre assigned to a research group / mentor, typically how does one come up with the final research topic? Did professor suggest some areas / provide some research papers first, then student researched / defined the project further, or was it completely âopen-endedâ where the student was expected to come up with the project idea, then bounced the idea further with mentor? "</p>
<p>@lisalee8</p>
<p>Iâm also going to answer this because my answer differs a lot from LuoSciOly.
My assigned mentor assigned me two people to work under. No one had a project planned for me, so I actually had quite a bit of freedom in deciding what I wanted to work on (I worked on two main projects, and randomly sampled/helped with others). Also I had to come up with my own procedures for the t-cell project, not so much for the other one. Basically Iâd read papers (they gave me access to the database, and I found what I needed), outlined my ideas and proposed reactions, my mentor would review/amend my plan (mostly just reagents), and Iâd go through with it. I had prior research experience, but it was pretty limited and not really in this field. As a result of this I failed a lot. </p>
<p>And if youâre a math kid, then I think they just leave you to solve the problemâŠlol no one really knows what they do all dayâŠ</p>
<p>So really you get the whole range.</p>
<p>Just wondering, what kind of math topics were there at RSI last year? Although, math is my strongest subject I didnât write down that as my researchâŠI actually thought doing research is math just ends up being number theory stuffâŠ</p>
<p>@prototyped: I ended up putting down applied math as one of my research fields. You would be surprised at how many different branches of mathematics there are. I certainly was. There are a lot of possibilities for interesting research projects. I put down game theory for my sub-field because I like the the real world scenarios it can deal with: economics, military strategy, etc.</p>
<p>@LuoSciOly: Thank you so much for all your help! Side question: to what extent did you do science olympiad? Did you even talk about it in your RSI application? Are you like from Solon, and got first place in everything at nationals?</p>
<p>@lisalee8: I just know from everything I have ever read everywhere about RSI that it is amazing in every way. I am not going to worry about any details unless I get in. I know it can be fun to get excited about these things, but my advice would be not to get too excited. You are just setting your self up for disappointment. You are less likely to get in RSI than you are to get into MIT. Just chill, hope for the best, and be prepared for the worst.</p>
<p>@prototyped: You can see a list of RSI 2012 math projects [url=<a href=âhttp://www-math.mit.edu/news/summer/rsiabstracts.html]here[/urlâ>http://www-math.mit.edu/news/summer/rsiabstracts.html]here[/url</a>] and the abstracts of all of the projects [url=<a href=âhttp://math.mit.edu/news/summer/2012RSIAbstracts.pdf]here[/urlâ>http://math.mit.edu/news/summer/2012RSIAbstracts.pdf]here[/url</a>].</p>
<p>@that1randomguy: During the school year, Science Olympiad is basically my life. Weâre not as good as Solon (LOL I wish) but weâve won state for the past two years. Our goal is to finish in the top 10 at nationals this year and bring home a nationals trophy for the first time ever. And yes, Science Olympiad was the only science extracurricular I talked about in my RSI application essays. :D</p>
<p>Also, I agree with your comment that RSI is amazing in every way. :D</p>
<p>LuoSciOly, I guess I will probably see you there. This is my second year on the team, but our team has been the reigning state champs for 4 years now. Our goal as a team is only top (bottom? better I guess) half. My personal goal however is to take home a medal from nationals.</p>
<p>Edit: Sorry off topic, donât have enough posts for PM.</p>
<p>
^Itâs actually pretty cool how much specificity that one piece of information gives. There are currently only 4 states whose high school Science Olympiad champions have winning streaks of exactly 4 years: Connecticut, New Hampshire, New Jersey, and South Carolina. (All other statesâ champions have winning streaks that are either longer or shorter than 4 years.) Since New Jerseyâs champion routinely finishes in the top 20, your team goal statement leads me to conclude that you are either from Hopkins School (CT), Merrimack High School (NH), or Clinton High School (SC).</p>
<p>Unless of course your statement about the exactly 4 year winning streak is incorrect D:<</p>
<p>Dam, Luo thatâs creepy. Even though I know what high school you go to⊠Lol jk. But yea I looked through the project and itâs a bunch of Linear programming , Graph theory and Abstract algebra</p>
<p>Has anyone here went to Intel ISEF last year? Moreover, does RSI care if you went to ISEF? Just wondering if my chances are still an electron in a haystack :p</p>
<p>That is somewhat creepy Luo. Where did you get that data to begin with? I did a quick google search, but I donât see how you could have found that without checking every stateâs SO website.</p>
<p>Well, I like to follow teams/tournaments across the country to get a feel for the state-by-state dynamics of Science Olympiad and to know who weâre facing at nationals. (The time I spend reading about other statesâ Science Olympiad organizations would probably be better spent actually preparing for Science Olympiad, heheh.) State tournament results are available on scioly.org, processed and collated from the official national results spreadsheets available on soinc.org. I apologize for the creepiness. My team used to operate by the mantra âEat, Sleep, Science Olympiad,â until we realized that âEat, Creep, Science Olympiadâ was probably more apt (given the high quantity of creeping and low quantity of sleeping that we do).</p>
<p>@terminatorp: Did you? Project ID?</p>
<p>From what I hear tho, ISEF Finalist status means little. I think everyone here are electrons :/</p>
<p>Quick Question: Can your selected research field increase or decrease your chances for getting accepted?</p>
<p>looking at the number of Math projects over the past few years, it looks like they put a cap on the number accepted for each field.</p>
<p>@terminatorp
Are you an ISEF finalist when you win your local science fair or is that semifinalist?
Anyway, congrats! You have that on your application over the rest of us so it can only help. But yeah, ISEF is a big deal in general where iâm from so itâll probably help for RSI.</p>
<p>for what its worth I want to say about 12 Rickoids were at ISEF last year. You really get the whole range as LuoSciOly pointed out, from people who are ISEF grand awards winners to people who have never had a chance to research before, from national Science Olympiad winners (ahem mucus boy) to ppl never knew Science Olympiads existed. I donât know that it matters very much (then again I donât think anyone knows who gets selected and whyâŠthe CEE is a mysterious place) </p>
<p>As for the research interestâŠpick something you are passionate about. You want your love of science to come through in the writing. Perhaps they do have some rough quotasâonly so many profs in this area, perhaps they donât (Frankly its Boston, Iâm sure theyâll find you underwater basket weaving if you wanted it). You would increase your chances of admission, however, by writing about an area/problem that truly interests you. That interest and passion for science was the only thing that all 81 of us had in common.</p>
<p>81? I thought it was 80âŠ</p>
<p>In other news, only ~2 months more to go, guys! Weâre one-fifth there!</p>
<p>Yes, there were 81 in 2012. The number fluctuates slightly from year to year due to funding. In 2011 there were 77.</p>
<p>does anyone know anything about sending supplemental materials, such as january sat scores/transcripts with fall grades? my school just released fall grades, and i just took the january sat.</p>
<p>I donât know if thereâs a way to send in supplements; the website doesnât mention anything. I donât really see a need to send in your January transcript unless thereâs a significant improvement in grades compared to what you sent in (and I somewhat doubt that; the crowd that applies is very self selecting in that regard). The same thing applies for the SAT, but itâs much more possible that your SAT improved. If you havenât been able to find anything either, then the only thing I could suggest is emailing Maite to ask if you can scan them and send them in or something. Supplements certainly arenât necessary, if thatâs what your question is.</p>