Questions and Answers

How can I participate in the competition?

PJAS is open to all junior and high school students interested in science, math and technology. The first step is to see if your school has a teacher sponsor. Click on the Overview page to check if your school participates. If your school is listed, you’ll have to find the science teacher in charge of PJAS at your school. A good place to start is by asking your current science teacher. If your school is not listed, send an email to the Region 3 director and she will help you. Next, speak with your teacher and check the Overview page to make sure your project fits into one of the four categories. From this point, your sponsor will guide you.

Where can I get ideas for a project?

A good place to start thinking of ideas is with your fellow PJAS participants and your science PJAS sponsor. The program books from previous meetings may be helpful to obtain ideas for projects.

What documents do I need for my project?

• All students will need to fill out the 1, 1A, 1B Condensed Form (found to the right) for their PJAS project.
• Any student who is working on a human behavior project or survey will need to fill out Form 4: Human Subjects ISEF form. These types of projects will need to have a minimum of 30 participants and each participant will fill out an Informed Consent Statement (minors will need an adult signature).
• Any student who plans to conduct their research at an institution will need to submit Form 1C: Registered Research Institutional/Industrial Setting Form. All forms can be found by clicking the ISEF link to the right.

What preparations should I make for the PJAS Competition?

Dress is business casual. Students will need to save their presentation as a PDF file and save it to a portable flash drive. The file size should not be more than 10mb. All forms should already be submitted to the committee, so it is not necessary to bring any forms to the competition. The use of flash cards is permitted during the presentation however students should not rely too heavily on the cards while presenting. *Please note that the State Competition requires students to upload their presentations (as a PDF) to the registration website before presenting at Penn State.

How will I be evaluated?

Students wishing to present their projects for the PJAS regional meeting are grouped into units with other students of similar grade and category of research. They are evaluated by a small team of judges. Students give timed oral presentations about their projects after which judges may ask questions for a five minute time period. Judges score the students on their individual presentations. The school sponsor receives student results.

How can I present at the State Meet?

All students who receive a first award at the Regional Meet are eligible to go to the State Competition at Penn State University.