Regeneron Science Talent Search is the oldest and most prestigious research competition in American high school science: a $250,000 top award, ten finalist prizes, and a scholar list that reads like a preview of future Ivy League classes. It is also the most misunderstood competition on the calendar, because most families discover the two facts that matter after it is too late to act on them.
The two facts that decide everything
It is seniors only, and individual research only. You get exactly one shot, in 12th grade, with work that is yours alone. Which means STS is not really a senior-year activity. It is the destination that sophomore and junior year research should be aimed at.
The Research Report carries the most weight. Every eligible entry is scored by three PhD scientists across the application, the report, and overall scientific potential, with the greatest weight on the written report. Not the interview, not the essays, not the school name. The paper.
How the funnel works
Roughly 2,500 entrants. Three PhD scientists score each entry. The top 300 become STS Scholars, each earning $2,000 with another $2,000 to their school. A panel of 15 distinguished scientists then selects 40 finalists, who travel to Washington for a week of interviews and presentations that decide the top 10 awards, up to $250,000.
Note what that means: Scholar, the top 300, is decided entirely on paper. Nobody meets you. Your written report does all the talking, to three scientists who read entries for a living.
What scholars do differently
1. They start the research in 10th or 11th grade. A senior-year deadline of early November means the research must be substantially complete by the summer before senior year. Scholars are running experiments while their classmates are writing college essay drafts.
2. They write a real paper, not a project summary. The report that survives three PhD readers has the structure of a journal article: a focused question, a defensible method, honest statistics, stated limitations, and a contribution the field would recognize. Students who have already been through peer review write recognizably better reports, which is why published students are so over-represented on the scholar list.
3. They can prove the work is theirs. STS requires individual research and asks precisely who did what. Mentored work is normal and welcome, but the ideas, the analysis and the writing must be defensibly the student's own. Every form, every recommendation, and if you reach finals, every interview, tests this.
4. They enter everything else too. The same project that goes to STS in November competes at their regional fair, JSHS and ISEF in the spring. STS is one room the work enters, not the only one.
The timeline, working backwards from November
| Grade | What is happening |
|---|---|
| 10th | Research skills built, first project completed, ideally published |
| 11th | The STS project: original, individual, substantial. Research through the year, data by summer |
| Summer before 12th | Paper written and revised, recommendations arranged |
| September-October, 12th | Application essays, forms, final polish |
| Early November | Submit, days early |
If you are reading this as a junior or younger, you are exactly on time. If you are a senior with finished research, you are in the small group that can actually execute this in the window.
Where YRI fits
The single strongest predictor of a competitive STS report is having written a real paper before. That is the entire design of the YRI Fellowship: 10 weeks of original research 1-on-1 with a full-time PhD mentor, finished into a first-author paper submitted to a peer-reviewed venue. 87% of our Fellows publish, and the sophomores and juniors among them arrive at STS season with the one asset the competition weighs most: a paper that has already survived expert readers.
Rolling admissions, reviewed within 48 hours: yriscience.com.
Free download: The 2026-27 Science Fair Blueprint
All 25 competitions, deadlines, eligibility traps, and what the judges in each one actually score. Free to share with your school.
Selection process summarized from Society for Science's published STS materials. Confirm current-year rules and dates at societyforscience.org/regeneron-sts.