Eligibility & Rules

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Eligibility

There is a diagram to help determine eligibility for the Synopsys Championship.

  • All students who are younger than 20 years old on or before March 1 preceding the Championship and who attend school in Santa Clara County in grades 6–12 are eligible to enter unless they have entered (or plan to enter) another ISEF-affiliated fair in the same school year. Click here to see a list of Santa Clara County cities.
  • Homeschooled students who attend a home school located in Santa Clara County are eligible to enter, even if they participate in online classes from outside the county.
  • Students who live in Santa Clara County and attend an online school full-time are eligible to enter.
  • Students who attend school in Santa Clara County but complete projects at Registered Research Institutions in another locale are eligible to enter.

A student may participate in only one project.

  • Individual projects – $40 application processing fee
  • Team projects—$50 application processing fee for a team of 2-3 students entering a team project. All members of a team must be eligible under the rules. SCVSEFA strongly recommends teams with just 2 students.
  • All projects will be judged for scientific merit using the same criteria regardless of the number of individuals preparing the projects.

General Rules

  1. The Synopsys Championship is an ISEF affiliated fair. We follow the ISEF Rules and Guidelines and expect all students to read and abide by the ISEF ethics statement.
  2. The greatest number of rule infractions in the last 2 years involved students making apps or other devices that claimed to treat or diagnose any illness.  All such projects must be done under the guidance of a qualified doctor and be submitted for pre-approval.
  3. “Scientific fraud and misconduct are not condoned at any level of research or competition. Such practices include plagiarism, forgery, use or presentation of other researcher’s work as one’s own, and fabrication of data. Fraudulent projects will fail to qualify for competition in affiliated fairs and ISEF. [SCVSEFA and the] Society for Science and the Public reserve the right to revoke recognition of a project subsequently found to have been fraudulent.”
    Students who have their projects removed from competition for fraud or misconduct may not enter the Synopsys Championship the following year.
  4. Carefully read the web page about Project Types and Minimum Quality Requirements. Please adhere to these requirements or your project will fail to qualify for competition.
  5. The Adult Sponsor Checklist (Form 1) should be used to ensure that the Application is complete. The Application and Forms may be downloaded, completed and saved as PDFs. Additional forms are required for some projects. The ISEF Rules Wizard can also help you determine which forms to complete.
  6. Projects requiring SRC pre-approval before beginning experimentation must be submitted by the appropriate date. Our only deviation from the ISEF Rules is that, for safety reasons, we request that projects involving chemicals, hazardous activities and devices or regulated substances also seek pre-approval.
  7. Projects that are a continuation of a previous year’s research require SRC pre-approval. They must involve significant new work and additional paperwork is required (see Form 1A of the Application form). Only the current year’s research may be in the project presentation.
  8. Projects must comply with all local, state and federal laws as well as SCVSEFA and ISEF Rules. We reserve the right to fail to qualify the project of any student who does not follow these.
  9. For the 2025 Synopsys Championship the research work must be done between Jan. 1, 2024 and March 2025 (with no more than 12 months total time).
  10. All MIDDLE SCHOOL projects (grades 6-8) must be done in the school, home, or field.  No projects will be admitted for work done in a research institution.
  11. HIGH SCHOOL projects (grades 9-12) may be done in a Regulated Research Institution (RRI) such as a university, college, or professional research institution, provided all rules regarding their use are followed. An RRI project supervisor (PhD level only) should fill out and sign the appropriate forms. See Who Can Sponsor.
  12. Science Fair policy for students who should have been judged as RRI, but registered incorrectly and were judged as non-RRI: 1) downgrade the Category Award one level, 2) downgrade two levels, or 3) disqualify the student from Category Awards and the State Fair. One option will be chosen by SCVSEFA depending on the facts of the case. In addition, other award winners in the same judging team will be upgraded one level as appropriate.
  13. Parent sponsored projects (PSPs) are permitted in certain situations. See Who Can Sponsor.
  14. On judging day, students must be present starting at 1:30 PM for high school students and 2:00 PM for middle school students. Students must be present at individual projects to be judged. For team projects, at least one eligible team member must be present to be judged, however judges may reduce project scores if they are not able to confirm that all members of the team contributed appropriately.
  15. For non-RRI projects, projects are judged by grade by Category Judges, however 11th and 12th grade projects may be judged together to improve the quality of judging.

The Student Researcher(s)

The student researcher is responsible for all aspects of the research project including enlisting the aid of any required supervisory adults (Adult Sponsor, Qualified Scientist, etc.), obtaining necessary approvals (SRC, IRB, etc.), following the Rules & Guidelines of the Synopsys Championship, and performing the experimentation, engineering, data analysis, etc.  High school students should list their sponsoring high school teacher as the Adult Sponsor except in some cases where the project was done at an RRI (see above).

Use of a non-school research site or Regulated Research Institute.

Projects done at Regulated Research Institutions (RRI) will be judged for Category Awards with other RRI projects.  Projects done at school or home will be judged against non-RRI projects.

Notes about Judging

Students choose a Category and Field of Study for their project. An accurate choice of the Field of Study increases the likelihood that the project will be assigned to judges who understand and appreciate the project. The SRC may recommend or require a change of category after reviewing your project. A science project involves a study, hypothesis and experiment.  An engineering project involves an application, design or device and an engineering goal.

  • The codes used to assign project numbers may have changed. For more information on Categories, Fields of Study and project numbers, go to the Project Categories page.
  • For Category Awards, projects will be judged by category in groups of about 8 to 12 projects by one or more judges. Projects are judged with projects from similar fields of study.
  • Projects done at home, school or in the field (non RRI) continue to be judged by grade and category. Math projects may be grouped together and not judged by grade. Projects (grades 9 to 12 only) done at Regulated Research Institutions (RRI) are judged by category only. (Category judging in the California Science & Engineering Fair and International Science and Engineering Fair is also not done by grade).  Awards will be given in four categories. The overall % category awards given remains the same (about 40%) total.

In person interviews with judges may last up to 8-10 minutes.

Students should be prepared to give a one to two minute verbal description of their project (no Power Points). Students need to explain their complete projects in terms that the judges can understand. Then judges will ask the students questions about their projects.

Remember to list the website in your references if the idea for your project came from a website.

Judges may disqualify projects from awards if coaching or prompting by other adults is observed by judges during the interview.