Pros and Cons of Competing
As you've probably guessed, doing a math fair project isn't all sunshine and rainbows, here are the most important things you should know before starting a project:
The Good Things:
Math fairs are generally inexpensive and relatively simple to get involved in.
You learn a lot, not just about the topic you're researching, but also valuable life skills such as public speaking, writing a paper, writing content to be displayed, how to break down complicated ideas for an audience, thinking on the fly, how to deal with failure, and much more.
Competing in math and science fairs is an excellent way to elevate your resume, make your application stand out, or give you an edge in other competitive application-based scenarios. It also gives you an experience to write an essay about, no matter how you perform.
Math and science fair projects are so incredibly rewarding to do. Solving problems, learning about issues, and making a difference in your community are all important parts of growing up to be a compassionate person who strives for a better world for everyone.
The Not-So-Good Things:
To put it honestly, the math fair is extremely competitive and your odds of winning are slim. Going in expecting to win an award is setting yourself up for failure.
Projects are also extremely time and work-intensive. Typically, we have our ideas in November or December, then we research, develop a question, conduct the project, plan our boards, write the content for them, put everything together, and practice presenting in time for the competition in March. A project can be up to 5-6 months of hard work, and is not for the faint of heart or those with little free time to work on it.
It can also be pretty stressful. There are lots of important deadlines to meet, and our math fair has zero exceptions for those who miss them. Especially towards the end, there will be many late nights of work, and plenty of frustration and snags along the way.
Also, if your community doesn't have a local fair, and/or the regional fair is far away, competing will require extra work and proactivity on your part to get involved. We didn't have any school or county fairs, but the regional fair was held <20 minutes away, so we were fortunate in that regard.
The Other Things:
In addition to individual projects, our math fair also offered the chance to do group projects and continuation projects. These modifications to the "standard" project come with their advantages and challenges.
Individual projects are often the most convenient. They have the fewest moving parts with only 1 person conducting research, but that also means that 1 person is doing all the work, which can be overwhelming.
Our math fair allowed groups of up to 3 to work on and present 1 project together. Group projects can be very fun and a nice way to spread the workload thinner, but they also come with all the challenges of any group project. People argue, get sick, contribute less, back out, etc. If you are interested in doing a group project, make sure everyone involved knows what they're getting into and is well and truly up for the challenge.
Continuation projects build off of the work you did in a previous year. They are a great way to use a good idea again and continue exploring something interesting, but come with a lot of rules and restrictions as to how the work must be done. For example, some fairs state you can't use any of the data you collected in past years, or that your project must build off of work done in the last year, and cannot be from before then. Some may not allow continuation projects at all. Check at your local fair to see the rules regarding continuation (and team) projects.