Entering BT Young Scientist 2014? We've Got Some Advice For You, Direct From This Years Entries!

Hi guys, it's Niamh again, I'll shut up about BT after this post, I promise. 

So basically, BT was the best fun ever, and I'd like to think that next year we'll have another group of Young Scientists representing us and having fun in Dublin in 2014. In order to make sure of this, I'm going to gather together some useful advice from all of us who went up this year. We've been there, done that and got the bags of free stationary to prove it, so to speak.

So here it is, straight from this years competitors, you want to enter BT Young Scientist 2014? Read this post.

Before you apply

1. Check the BT Young Scientist website regularly. It has so much helpful information and advice, and if you go into the project thinking 'I have no idea what I have to do' it tells you (in detail) exactly what is expected of you. They even have a section for your teachers and parents. http://www.btyoungscientist.ie/

2. Start thinking of ideas soon. Yeah, I know it's only May, but the winning group this year (Kinsale Community School, Cork's project: 'A statistical investigation of the effects of diazotroph bacteria on plant germination') started working on their project in February, so the moral of the story is, if you want to do well, start early. 

3. Don't let the chance of not getting in prevent you from starting early, if you are confident in your project and you sell it well enough you will get in. If you don't believe in your project enough to start early, you might as well not start at all.

4. If you are going to work in a group make sure the people you are working with have both the time and the ability to get to your experiments. You don't want to have one member of your group being constantly left out of everything, it isn't fair.

5. DO NOT PROCRASTINATE! DO NOT LEAVE EVERYTHING TO THE LAST MINUTE! JUST. DO. NOT. DO. IT. OK?

6. Don't chose a topic you don't like, it will bore you, you will have no motivation, your project will be awful.

7. Spend time on your application, don't leave it until the last minute. (If your application is rubbish, you will not get in, if you application is good and well put, you will get in. Understand?)

8. If you have a good idea, but your worried it's a bit weird, do it anyway. Weird is good, very good. If it's very original you have a much better chance of getting in.

9. Check the previous years projects to make sure what you intend to do has not been done before. If it has you won't get in as it'll be considered plagiarism.

10. Don't do something boring because it's easy, as said in 7 you'll get bored, your project will suffer.

11. Don't enter if you don't have the time to enter. The project is not massively time consuming, but you would want to make sure you have enough time to get everything done.

12. Make sure you have a teacher on board. It is a requirement of entering. You cannot enter if you do not have a teacher with you but...

13. You do not necessarily have to choose a teacher that you actually have. If you think that teacher X would be better than teacher Y for what you want to do, but you don't have teacher X, ask teacher X anyway. As long as it's okay with them and they agree to do it you'll be grand.