Tips for Success

• Understand the Contest. Read the contest overview and components carefully.
• Focus your effort to respond to the specific evaluation criteria. The Scientific Committee consists of professional scientists, researchers and educators. They evaluate each entry against the specified evaluation criteria for that contest. Content, including science accuracy, will guide their decisions. Try to be specific and do not write something you have not previously verified its accuracy and most importantly do not write something you do not understand. Try to be consistent and do not stretch your project too much. Focused projects are most likely to be successful as they are more thorough and explicit. Try to organize your project so it will have a rational sequence and structure. Also, try to create an attractive layout.
• Work on the basics. The physical appearance of an entry is often an indicator of serious effort by the student(s). Neat, well edited, readable entries, without spelling errors, make any entry a better competitor. If your entry is an essay it is recommended that it would be proofread by someone other than the creator(s).
• Seek the support of a Mentor. Check the Odysseus II Contest webpage for choosing a Mentor from your country.
• Plan ahead. Make a blueprint of your project, outlining your main course of action. Manage your time so that your work schedule allows time for reviewing and revising your entry.
• Use the template provided by the organizers to support and document your project.
• Pick a topic that’s meaningful to you. This will make it easier to focus and spend time on your project.
• Develop a research question that will help you define what your entry will answer. Ask yourself, about the relationship between the focus of your project and the outcome you are interested in. Think of it as your entry’s objective or hypothesis stated as a question.
• Draw diagrams or flow charts to organize the information you would collect on space and particularly on your topic and to help you work out how to translate that information into something meaningful.
• Read and study the demo projects on the Odysseus II website and the Frequently Asked Questions.
• Ask any clarifying questions to the organizers by completing the relevant contact form.
• Organize tools, materials and supplies for the contest.
• Find helpful websites on space and sources of relevant material for your project, but stick with reputable and trustworthy sources (e.g. ESA or NASA websites and sites with an .edu suffix).
• Spend a lot of time gathering background information on your topic.
• Make sure that any fact you use in your argument is verifiable by trustworthy sources before considering them to be valid.
• Go in-depth with your research. Try learning scientific concepts and be as detailed as possible.
• Do not get discouraged if you run into problems while creating your project. Rome was not conquered in a day.
• Have fun! Enjoy your travel to space adventure!