Regeneron Science Talent Search

Only students in their final year of secondary school, normally 12th grade, may apply, and juniors cannot submit. The application requires an original paper of up to 20 pages, and the research generally needs to be essentially finished by the summer before senior year, so 10th and 11th grade are the window for running experiments and collecting data, ideally scheduled around AP science coursework rather than against it.

Yes. Regeneron STS keys on residence and schooling rather than citizenship: a student who lives in the US or its territories and is attending their final year of secondary school there is eligible, including students on visas. US citizens living abroad may also apply; the one excluded group is non-citizens attending American schools overseas.

No. Regeneron STS accepts only independent, individual research, and team projects are ineligible — even two students dividing different parts of the same experiment counts as team research. This is one of the hardest differences from ISEF, which allows teams of up to three: a project done as a team cannot be repurposed for an STS application.

Three things differ. Eligibility: STS is seniors only, ISEF is open to grades 9-12. Format: STS is judged on an online application, a paper and essays, while ISEF requires winning an affiliated fair and then defending a poster in person. Teams: ISEF allows up to three students, STS is individual work only. A common approach is to use one body of research for both — fairs and ISEF in junior year, STS the following autumn.

Everything is submitted online: essay responses, structured questions about the research project, an original paper of no more than 20 pages, teacher and mentor recommendations, a transcript, and optional test scores, which are not penalized if omitted. For 2027 the window ran June 1 to November 5, 2026 at 8pm ET, and recommendations were due by that same deadline.

Yes. Society for Science states that neither a mentor nor an institutional lab is required, and it explicitly encourages at-home research; working with adult researchers at an institution is allowed, but the application must draw a clear line between the student's own contribution and the lab's collective work. When a school has no matching research program, a student can start with an independent project or sharpen research methods through an outside course such as EDUBUS. The real requirement is completed research with data and results.

Roughly 2,600 students apply each year. Three hundred are named Scholars, each receiving $2,000 with another $2,000 to their school, and 40 of those become Finalists who travel to Washington, DC for finals week and compete for over $1.8 million, with a top award of $250,000. That works out to just over a 10% chance of Scholar and under 2% of Finalist, and even reaching Scholar carries real weight in an application.

Work backwards from the early-November deadline of senior year: the paper and essays must be done by then, so the research itself needs to wrap up by the end of the summer before senior year. A steady sequence is settling on a direction in 10th grade, running experiments in 11th and taking them to a regional fair to sharpen the explanation, writing the paper that summer, and spending the fall of senior year on essays and recommendations — a rhythm that also keeps the work from colliding with the school year's exam calendar.