Judging FAQ Sheet

Who can judge?
Anyone with a science, engineering, teaching, or other technical background may be a judge at the Science Fair. If you are a parent of a student participating in the fair or the teacher of students in the fair, you can still judge at the fair. We take care of any possible conflicts of interest by assigning those judges to other judging categories. This may be by discipline (Biological or Physical) or by age (grades 7-8 or 9-12).

What is the judging procedure?
The projects are judged in three passes. The first pass is on Saturday morning and runs from about 8 AM to noon. Judges are divided into teams and spend the morning talking to students about their work each team will have 14-18 projects to judge based on the fair criterion. By 11:30, each judging team will have looked at all the assigned projects and will then meet to discuss and pick the best 3 or 4 projects in their group. These projects will then go on to be finalists and participate in the next round of judging in the afternoon.

The second round of judging proceeds as the first round, except that only the finalist projects are involved. Judging starts at 2 PM and is over by around 4:30 PM depending on the number of projects each team has to see and how much the judges discuss the projects. For this round, the judges must pick the four best projects in order of preference.

The final round of judging takes the first place winners from each category and evaluates the projects to pick the "Best Overall" projects of the fair. Members of the planning committee and whoever else is willing to hang around usually do this judging. It is usually completed by 6:30 - 7:00 PM.

On what criterion are the project judged?
You will be asked to judge the projects based on this criterion.

What are the "Special Awards"?
The special awards are awards given by various organizations and professional societies for work in their area or areas of interest. Some of these awards are judged and awarded by the sponsoring organization. Other awards are judged by our volunteers based on the organizations requirements. If you are interested in juding for these awards, please indicate so on the judges registration form. (This judging occures in the afternoon session).
Click here for a list of last year's "special" awards"

Are there any other pointers for judging?
Here are some additional important pointers:

• Do not ask the student's name or school.
• The idea of the fair is to give the student a positive experience on his work. Do not try to tear apart their work. Try to ask positive, leading questions, to get the student to think.
  
• Some projects will be so impressive; that you will not believe the student did the work. Always assume that they did the work unless basic questioning indicates that the student has a complete lack of knowledge on the subject.
  
• Do not talk about the projects where the students can hear you. Save your discussions for the judge's room.
  
• Visit each project individually and not as a team. This gives the student more opportunity to talk and is a more positive way of judging the project since it is one on one.
  
• Ask the students questions. The purpose of the questions is to understand what they did and how much they understand, not to tear the work apart. One of my favorite questions is "What would you have done differently if you did it over again?"