Every admission season, the spotlight inevitably falls on the brilliant students accepted by top-tier universities such as Harvard, Yale, Stanford, and MIT. Countless parents and students are curious: What exactly makes these Ivy League standouts succeed? How impressive are their backgrounds?

After digging into the backgrounds of these top scholars, we discovered a frequently appearing secret weapon—the International Science and Engineering Fair (ISEF), recently concluded in Phoenix and widely regarded as the ceiling of high school science research competitions.

It is important to note that over 7 million students participate globally each year, yet fewer than 1,800 make it to the global finals. Because of this, winning an award in this competition practically means having one foot already inside the doors of elite global institutions like HYPSM.

Faced with this ultimate honor and extremely low advancement rate, many parents naturally have questions:

• How exactly does this elite competition evaluate students?

• Do ordinary students really have a chance to get a ticket in?

To break down this information gap, we tracked and interviewed 7 past ISEF award-winning students. Today, they have walked into top universities like Yale, Stanford, MIT, Harvard, UPenn, and Cornell.

After deconstructing their growth trajectories, we found that the underlying logic for ordinary students to reverse-engineer their way into top-tier research and ultimately succeed in Ivy League admissions boils down to four keywords: Topic Selection, Strategy, Timing, and Expression.

Topic Selection: A Good Question is More Important than New Technology

Many parents and students have a deep-rooted misconception: ISEF-winning projects must have used some profound and cutting-edge technology.

Quite the opposite.

What truly moves ISEF judges is never how flashy the technology is, but rather whether the problem is real, whether the innovation is perceptible, and whether the social value is clear.

Formaldehyde Probes and Menstrual Pads: The Best Innovation is Understood by Everyone

Student S, from an international school in China, successfully secured admission offers from Yale University, MIT, and Caltech.

Her project was a probe that detects and eliminates formaldehyde. She ultimately won the highest award in the Environmental Engineering category at the global finals and was even featured in the official showcase on the ISEF website.

While there are detectors and formaldehyde removal products on the market, almost nothing combines detection and elimination into one. Student S keenly captured this pain point and designed an all-in-one probe.

Another student, T, from a US high school, won an ISEF regional award and was admitted to Stanford with her menstrual pad project.

She used new sustainable materials to solve two pain points simultaneously: discomfort during wear and single-use only. In particular, the reusable aspect formed a sharp contrast with traditional products. The innovation is instantly understood by everyone without any prerequisite knowledge.

In contrast, consider the common rat race of technical benchmarks seen in some competitions—for example, in computer vision, everyone crowds around existing benchmarks, desperately pushing accuracy from 95% to 96% and then to 97%. The technical level is indeed impressive, but the cost-effectiveness is extremely low. More importantly, to what extent this kind of grinding can truly锻炼 a high school student's innovative thinking and independent problem-solving abilities is highly questionable.

From Grandma's Rare Disease to AI Drug Discovery

Student L's topic selection stemmed from a very personal motivation.

He had the idea of doing research in the 9th grade. His interest in the field of computational biology originated from his family background—his grandmother suffered from a rare blood disease. There was no targeted medicine; he could only rely on drugs to alleviate symptoms, but the condition could not be truly reversed.

"I thought to myself, could I use computers to create some treatment plans to help people like my grandmother?" But there is a huge gap between wanting to do it and knowing what can be done. He knew almost nothing about the application of computers in the pharmaceutical field and wasn't even sure if a high school student's programming level could handle research at this level.

The answer from our mentor team was: Yes. AI drug discovery is a natural intersection of computing and biology. His programming foundation could be put to good use, and the direction itself possessed strong social value.

Ultimately, Student L completed two progressive projects: the first used multi-objective deep reinforcement learning for multi-attribute drug generation—while others did single-attribute optimization, he directly challenged multi-attributes; the second used Graph Neural Networks and Transformers for drug-target interaction prediction. Both projects won awards in the ISEF regional competitions, and with this experience, he secured admission offers from MIT and Stanford University.

The Best Topics Are Not Stuffed into Students

Student A, from the American School of Shanghai, had a very special background when she approached us in the 10th grade: she had been helping visually impaired individuals learn English for a long time.

Our team did not force her into a seemingly hotter direction. Instead, we followed her real experiences and designed an indoor navigation project for the visually impaired.

This was around 2022. Large language models were far from being as popular as they are today, and the threshold for using various AI tools was much higher than it is now. Student A needed to complete indoor scene modeling, semantic understanding, and navigation algorithm design based on the technical conditions at the time—every step was much more difficult than it is today.

What made it even more challenging was that she was competing in the ISEF Robotics category. For the past two years, the grand prize in this category had been monopolized by a student named Michelle, who later went to Harvard. When Student A saw Michelle's name on the finals list again, she did not retreat; instead, she wanted to personally meet this legendary competitor.

Ultimately, Student A surpassed Michelle, won the 4th prize in the ISEF Robotics category, and gained admission to MIT and Harvard. She later rejected MIT's CS major, becoming the first student in the history of the American School of Shanghai to reject MIT.

The logic behind topic selection remains consistent: it is not about stuffing students into a seemingly winning template, but starting from the students' real experiences and interests to unearth topics with academic value, social significance, and personal distinctiveness.

Strategy: How to Play a Combination Punch with One Project

Time is the scarcest resource for high school students. GPA must be maintained, standardized tests must be taken, and extracurricular activities must be done. The time that can be allocated to research is extremely limited.

Therefore, almost all 7 of these students had a common strategy: one in-depth project, adapted for multiple competitions!

One Food Safety Project Wins First Prize at the ISEF Global Finals and a National Award in the Conrad Challenge

Student T (from an international school in China) had a personal concern for food safety issues due to his childhood food allergies. Starting from the 9th grade, he was determined to conduct food safety-related research.

How to find an innovative breakthrough in an existing field was the first challenge. His breakthrough points were two: first, the precise application of nanomaterials; second, the creation of a prototype.

"Condensing the design system from the lab into a prototype is itself a technical challenge." Under the guidance of our mentors, he started with 3D model design, step by step contacting manufacturers, printing the first version of the prototype, the second version with a hard shell, and finally completed the sensor before the ISEF competition.

This project ultimately won the First Prize at the ISEF Global Finals and a National Award in the Conrad Challenge. Student T successfully secured admission offers from multiple top overseas institutions, including the UCB-M.E.T. dual degree program, Cornell University, Johns Hopkins University, and Duke University.

He did not create two projects for two competitions. Instead, based on the same research content, he made targeted adjustments according to the requirements of different competitions. In his own words:

"You don't need to do many different projects; you just need to know how to kill multiple birds with one stone."

A Soft Robotics Project Wins ISEF and STS Awards

Student Tony used the same strategy.

His topic was Self-sensing Pneumatic Soft Robotics. But initially, he actually wanted to do pure mathematical theoretical research—because he loved mathematics very much and had won awards in AMC, USACO, and physics competitions.

After analyzing the data of past ISEF regional competitions, our mentors found that the judging mechanism in his state preferred engineering directions. Pure mathematical theoretical projects often lack the advantage of engineering projects with experiments and physical results in the ISEF evaluation system. Ultimately, Tony chose soft robotics, which balanced academic depth and precisely matched the competition's judging preferences.

This project won awards in top scientific research competitions such as ISEF and STS, and he was successfully admitted to UPenn.

Tony summarized the focus and judging criteria of the two competitions—

STS: Engineering and practical application projects are more popular. Such as computational biology, various engineering fields, biomedical engineering, and even cutting-edge technologies like smart exoskeletons.

ISEF: Completing a project is far from the end; the expression of results and successful creation have equal value. ISEF is more like a competition of who can explain the project clearly in a short time. If you cannot clearly explain your project to the judges in a short time, the value of the project will be hard to fully recognize.

Knowing yourself and your enemy ensures you will never be defeated. Our students almost always use this strategy: one project for multiple competitions. Mentors will carefully adjust and optimize the project according to the judging criteria of each competition, ensuring every strike hits the mark accurately.

Timing: Research is a Marathon, the Earlier You Start, the More Relaxed You Will Be

Starting research in the 9th grade and starting in the 11th grade are two completely different experiences.

Student C is the most typical example.

He started working with us in the 9th grade. His first project was algorithm-oriented, focusing on parameter compression for AI models. He won a regional award, but more importantly—he truly felt for the first time that he could start from a problem, learn knowledge, practice hands-on, and finally create a work of his own.

So in the second year, he continued with a second project—helping ALS patients type with their eyes and communicate with the outside world by recognizing eye direction.

This topic was difficult. The difficulty was not just technical—eye tracking, natural language processing, interface design—but even more so, whether a high school student could truly understand: research is not about showing off skills, but about solving human problems.

To the surprise of the mentor team, Student C was almost fully invested from beginning to end. During the summer vacation, he spent six or seven hours a day on the project. When encountering problems, he searched Google, watched YouTube, found papers, and debugged programs himself, solving them step by step. The final result exceeded everyone's expectations. Ultimately, he won the Second Prize in the ISEF Software category.

Later, Student C received top admissions from Caltech and MIT. What is even more worth mentioning is that he later returned to do an internship, continuing to train himself in research and technology. What ISEF truly leaves behind does not end on the day of winning the award. A child opens a door because of research, and after entering a top university, continues to delve deeply into his field of interest.

Student L followed the same trajectory: starting his first project in the summer of 9th grade, continuing with the second in 10th grade. From multi-attribute drug generation to drug-target prediction, the two projects had a progressive relationship, gradually deepening and becoming more focused.

Among the 7 students, almost all started planning in the 9th or 10th grade. This is why the 9th grade is the real starting line—if you don't start now, you will be rushing later.

Expression: ISEF Competes Not Only on Technology but Also on Communication

Student Tony's words were particularly spot on: "I used to think that as long as the project was done well, it would naturally stand out, like gold that will always shine. But that's not the case; you have to tell people it's shining."

ISEF judges have to face a large number of contestants in a short time, and the time you have to communicate with each judge is extremely limited. If you cannot clearly articulate your project in a few minutes, then no matter how good the technology is, it cannot be fully recognized.

None of these 7 students winged it when it came to expression.

At the ISEF site, Student S directly demonstrated the detection effect of the probe—putting the probe into a sealed container with formaldehyde, and the indicator light changed color instantly. This show of operations became the best product description, and the judges immediately gathered around.

Another student, T, even deliberated repeatedly on what color to use for the display board, because she knew that visual presentation itself is the first ring of communication.

Student T recalled that we set up offline mock classrooms to help them repeatedly practice their defenses. How to design the poster, how to arrange the booth, what angles the judges might ask questions from—every link was supervised by professional mentors, and every detail was repeatedly scrutinized.

Student L mentioned that our mentors helped him significantly adjust his presentation strategy based on the ISEF regional competition's emphasis on practicality and social impact, adding a large amount of space in the poster to present the practical application value of the project. "Even if a project is completed quite well on a technical level, if it cannot be effectively presented to the judges, it is difficult to achieve ideal results in a scientific research competition."

Tony also experienced repeated mock defenses and speech revisions. "The mentors accompanied me throughout the process, assisting me in making personalized adjustments, and even providing meticulous support in aspects like paper formatting and content revision."

The premise of being seen is being understood. On the ISEF arena, expression ability is as important as technical ability.

7 students, 7 completely different research directions. Is there anything common in these stories? Yes, they all point to the same answer: finding the right direction at the right time and receiving the right guidance.

Dr. Wu, a leading research mentor and former ISEF judge, noted: Rather than saying ISEF makes it easy to get into the Ivy League, it is more accurate to say that these students, through long-term research accumulation, have long met the strict standards of top universities for academic pioneers. For students aiming for Ivy League schools, ISEF is a stage to showcase the ceiling of academic ability, not a shortcut for opportunism.

What Exactly is ISEF? Why Do Top Universities Favor This Ceiling of Science Innovation?

Regeneron ISEF, officially the International Science and Engineering Fair, sponsored by Regeneron Pharmaceuticals, was founded in 1950. With a history of over seventy years, it is the oldest, most influential, and most prestigious youth science innovation competition globally.

ISEF is open to students in grades 9-12 worldwide, with a total of 22 specific subject tracks, covering an extremely comprehensive range. From quantum physics, gene editing, and AI to the internet, biomedicine, and public policy, almost every leader in cutting-edge fields was once a high school student on the ISEF stage.

The reason ISEF's popularity remains high is not only due to its prestigious title as the Junior Nobel Prize but also its irreplaceable value in college admissions.

1. A Stepping Stone to Top US Universities

MIT's official website lists ISEF as the top recommended competition, publicly regarding it as an authoritative certification of high school students' research capabilities, and actively pays attention to and recruits ISEF award winners.

2. Comprehensive Strength Beyond the Competition

The value of ISEF has long transcended a single competition. It is an irreplaceable golden ticket in the study abroad application track and a well-deserved global hall for youth scientific research.

3. Precise Alignment with Admissions Criteria

Admissions officers have frankly stated that a solid ISEF experience often carries more weight than listing 10 ordinary extracurricular activities. It directly proves that the student possesses rare research talent, independent research capabilities, and an academic personality that surpasses peers.

In the 2026 Fall application season, students with high-quality ISEF backgrounds stood out exceptionally among applicants, securing offers from MIT, Stanford, Yale, and Caltech.

The New ISEF Season Sets Sail: How to Qualify for the Global Finals from Different Regions?

The selection threshold for ISEF is extremely high. Participants must first break through regional, state, and national affiliate competitions before they can compete with outstanding peers from countries and regions around the world.

Every year, millions of middle and high school students participate in selections at all levels. After layer-by-layer screening, only a little over a thousand can advance to the global finals. The admission rate is extremely low, comparable to the acceptance rates of HYPSM. Students who make it to the national competitions, finals, and win awards are themselves the top research talents among their global peers.

US High School Students

For students in US high schools pursuing the ISEF track, they typically need to go through the layer-by-layer selection of Regional Affiliate Competition, State Science Fair, and Global Finals. This tests not only the students' hardcore research capabilities but also is a game of information asymmetry and track selection.

The academic level, educational resources, and the number of participating Chinese-American students vary greatly across US states, leading to vastly different levels of fierce competition. For example, the competition in California and Texas is extremely intense, while in some Midwestern or less populated states, the competitive pressure is relatively small.

Different state affiliate competitions may also have subtle differences in judging preferences and subject focus. Therefore, understanding the specific rules of your state in advance can make your preparation direction more precise.

Mainland China Students

There are four official selection tracks in Mainland China:

• ISEF Sichuan Science and Engineering Fair
• Shanghai Science Seed International Exchange Program Selection
• ISEF Chongqing Selection Competition
• Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei Youth Science Fair (BTHYSF)

Note: The Sichuan competition also serves as an exclusive track for children of foreign nationals working in China.

Canada, Singapore, and Hong Kong

The ISEF selection path in Canada has also undergone major changes in recent years. Students must first participate in the Canada-Wide Science Fair (CWSF) hosted by Youth Science Canada (YSC).

The Singapore Science and Engineering Fair (SSEF) is the only official channel for Singaporean students to reach ISEF. In the Hong Kong region, students mainly compete for spots by participating in the ISEF Hong Kong Regional Preliminary Competition.

Science knows no borders! On the ISEF stage, geography is no longer a boundary. As long as you have a unique perspective on solving real problems, you can reap your glory and future on this world-class stage.