Guides and Forms

Following documents are created to help you make a successful application. Make sure to read all rules and regulations before you start your project, since there are specific forms to be filled for certain type of projects even before you start your research (Such as animal or human subject research). 

General Guides For All Projects
  • Terra NYC STEM Fair Rules and Forms: All guidelines and forms as a single file
  • Teacher Guide: General information for teachers, dates, deadlines, step by step registration guidelines
  • Student Guide: General information for students, dates, deadlines, fees, step by step registration guidelines.
  • Research Paper Guide: Review of Research paper writing requirements. 
  • Scientific Review Committee (SRC)  Guide: General information about the review of projects by SRC
  • Judging rubrics: Your guides to interviewing and evaluating projects
  • Sample judging schedule: (This is only for in-person fairs) Learn about your schedule during judging.
Gide and Templates for Presentations for All Projects
  • Presentation Instructions: Follow the format instructions using whichever template best fits the project.
  • Science Project Presentation Template
  • Engineering Project Presentation Template
  • Math-Computer Science Project Presentation Template
Gide and Template for Quad Charts for All Projects
  • Quad Chart Instructions: A Quad Chart is essentially a visual Abstract with the emphasis on brevity and bullets for the key points.
  • Quad Chart Template
Guides for Specific Projects
  • Human Participant Rules:  For projects using Human Participants (surveys, data sets, involving actual human participant for physical activity or medical procedure etc.)
  • Vertebrate Animal Rules:  For projects using Vertebrate Animals (fish, birds, reptiles, mammals, etc.)
  • Potentially Hazardous Biological Agents (PHBA) Rules: For projects using microorganisms (including bacteria, viruses, viroids, prions, rickettsia, fungi and parasites), recombinant DNA technologies or human or animal fresh/frozen tissues, blood, or body fluids, etc.
  • Hazardous Chemicals, Activities, Devices (HCAD) Rules: For projects using DEA-controlled substances, prescriptions drugs, alcohol and tobacco products, firearms, explosives, radiation, lasers, controlled drones, etc.
What is safety paperwork?

Affiliated science and engineering fairs require documentation signed by responsible adults that the students and their research subjects are safe throughout the process. Your sponsor (a teacher, parent or mentor) must review all of your procedures BEFORE the student begins experimenting or building. Sometimes additional adults sign forms using their specific expertise to make sure you and your subjects are safe. Those adults’ signatures and dates prove that evaluation was completed.

You and your adult(s) use checklists to make sure you have all the required forms :
All Students: SRC paperwork 
All Students: Media Release 
You can even use a Wizard to help you choose the correct forms.

How to Select the Project category?

Many projects could easily fit into more than one ISEF category. We highly recommend that you review the entire listing of the categories and sub-categories before choosing the category that most accurately describes your project. Ask yourself the following questions to help in the selection of a category:Who will be the most qualified to judge my project? What area of expertise is the most important for the judge to have? (For example, a medical background or an engineering background?)What is the emphasis of my project? What characteristic of my project is the most innovative, unique or important? (For example, is it the application in medicine or the engineering of the machine? Is it inserting the proper gene or the method of computer mapping to demonstrate the results?) In some cases, categories and subcategories have been combined for our specific guidelines and differ from those used in ISEF; a full description of the ISEF categories can be found on the ISEF website.