Its been a long time since I made any comments showing how busy I was for the past year or rather how bored I am now. As such, here I am sharing some interesting observations about this year’s Singapore Science and Engineering Fair 2008 (SSEF) registration as there is always something to talk about SSEF registrations.
One thing that makes this year different from most of the history of SSEF is its tighter screening which results in a greater number of projects being removed from the fair. While many, including myself, think that it would be a real pity to remove the good works of many, I think that its more of a practical constrain of space and human resource that makes it impossible for everyone to present. I would really like to illustrate this point with an example: while my group and I got into SSEF 2007 with a project that (literally) counted cells (using a hemocytometer under the light microscope), others who did stuff like luciferase/vectors/transduction etc was not able to get past the first round. The increase in standard is really a surprise and has increased the causalty rate from almost negliable to 41% this year (Table 1, below):
| Total applicants* | Approved applicants | Causalty rate | VJC total applicants | VJC approved applicants | VJC Causalty rate |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 422 | 249 | 41% | 53 | 36 | 32% |
*after removing duplicates and spam
This is unprecedented in SSEF history before (at least not that I known of)! I vividly recall that my first SSEF project in SSEF 06 was they first year the screening system was implemented, where few projects that were affected/removed. This sentiment carried on to last years SSEF 07 where the it was relatively unheard of that many projects where removed; of course there were some for both years. But this year, the 41% casualty rate seems to be quite high and its effects could be felt quite soundly.
Of course, here let us focus on our own school. We can see that the causalty rate is quite high at 32%, which is almost 1 in 3 projects. Nevertheless, the sliver lining is that VJC’s average casualty rate of 32% is lower than the total average of 41%. I think that it would be interesting to see how this compares to others schools so did anyone did anything for the other schools? (please do share if you have, thanks!). To be honest, I am still not very sastified with a 32% casualty rate which is not very confidence inspiring fact for next years’ batch. Nonetheless, its the quality that matters not the quantity but with VJC’s decreasing trend of medal tally fro 4 consecutive years, things are certainly not bright.
Statistics do not represent everything, and I think that the numbers do not show us a complete picture. For example, some projects are inter-school projects involving members from more than one school, so to avoid double-counting, I simply took the school as the school the project is registered at. Also, some people did 2 or more projects so the statistics really do not give you the individual causalty rate but the project causalty rate.
I think that SSEF 08 would be very interesting; the bars are raised and the standards have shot up. This time round its not going to be so easy to maintain the standard but we should take it on a postive light, that winners can be very well convinced that they are up to the mark. On VJC’s side, this year might be a very decisive year as the first batch of Integrated Programme (IP) reach their 4th year (IP4/JC2) and are competing with the IP and non-IP projects from other schools so whether the effectiveness of the IP is something worth looking out for. Finally what I really hope is that VJC would break her 4 consecutive years of drop (have 3 or more if you can afford it, but we are really broke here) and win a nice set of medals, ideally surpassing the 2004 year or at least get a silver and beat the 2005 year. All the best to VJC in this year’s upcoming SSEF!
