I've read all the articles on science buddies on how to find a topic, a mentor etc. However, I would appreciate it if someone could help me with the exact process of determining a topic for an advanced science competition.
(1) Should I wait to look through research after I find a mentor and they recommend papers to me, or should I have a topic ready before I contact my mentor and will they only supplement and edit what I have (in terms of a topic and background info) after that?
(2) Also, how much background research should I have done before I contact potential mentors?
Thank you!
How to determine my topic?
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Re: How to determine my topic?
I can only speak to what my daughter is doing for her first high school level science fair. Ask yourself, "what makes me attractive to a mentor?" If you know nothing about the topic, you will not come across as being a great kid to work with. One way to do that is to read the professor's papers, but there are other options as well.(1) Should I wait to look through research after I find a mentor and they recommend papers to me, or should I have a topic ready before I contact my mentor and will they only supplement and edit what I have (in terms of a topic and background info) after that?
(2) Also, how much background research should I have done before I contact potential mentors?
My daughter includes a brief outline of the work she has done in previous science fairs to show that she is serious about science. Other things you could do: mention honors or AP science/math background, any other science experience or STEM extracurricular activities, name drop a science teacher or neighbor who recommended the potential mentor to you, etc.
For general query letters, she is reading the professors' home pages on the web, but not their papers. She describes what she found on their pages and how her interests relate to that. Since it will probably take more than one try to find a mentor, you should do some basic research on your potential names, but not necessarily hours and hours of detailed study.
For her past projects, she has started looking for mentors once she has a general idea of a topic, but that has always changed from when she started emailing scientists to the final project. For example, last year her topic started out as broadly "the atmosphere of Mars," which changed to "wind on Mars," and ended up as a project studying a specific cloud pattern on Mars. While she was thinking about the wind topic, she was emailing a potential mentor who studies dunes. It didn't work out, but for a while she was thinking about dunes as a topic as well. The final topic will be some intersection of your interests and your mentor's expertise. You should have some basic idea of what you might be studying (don't present yourself as lost or clueless), but continue to research and refine your potential topic and find a mentor at the same time.
As far as an "exact process" goes: I don't think there's a cookie-cutter way to do this. It's more, follow your interests and ideas and potential mentor leads until something works out.