Applying for the Intel Science Talent Search (STS) is restricted to only seniors and consists of two parts: the research paper and the application located on the official STS webpage: http://www.sciserv.org/sts/documents/index.asp.

The paper, which is the core part of your submission, is limited to 20 pages. Other requirements include at least 1 inch margins, 12 pt font, and 8.5 by 11 inch paper. An example paper from an Intel STS 2006 Finalist is available for viewing in PDF format and can be found at this link: [insert link].

Use this for reference as we continue talking about the paper writing. Most people choose to write in Microsoft Word or, if they are comfortable, in LaTeX, a type-setting program that offers more versatility especially for mathematics papers which rely heavily on obscure symbols. LaTeX, however, does take some practice and learning (think of programming or coding a paper and you will get a brief glimpse at what LaTeX can be like), so it may be easier to just stick with the program that is most familiar with you. The referenced paper was written in Microsoft Word and follows a standard format for scientific papers as well as the Intel STS format.

The paper starts with a title page that lists the title, author name, address of school, and address of work location as well as a brief note of submission to the STS. The next page goes straight to the paper content. The abstract is actually included on a summary page within the application, which will be talked about later, and not within the paper. Note that line spacing is double spaced and there is a header and footer on every subsequent page. The header is simply the author name whereas the footer reiterates that the application is for the 2006 Intel Science Talent Search and the page number. Though not required, the header and footer were added for aesthetic purposes as the rest of the application contains the exact same header and footer. References are always cited in [ ] and numbered sequentially.

Much of the rest of the paper is self-explanatory in terms of formatting and content. One thing is that figures consisting of multiple papers should be labeled either with letters or numbers and then clearly cited within the caption (e.g. Figure 3 has a. and b. labels). The most important aspect of the paper, is still, the content and how you conducted the research, so that should definitely be the priority!