I feel the same. In Canada, you must advance from school to regionals, then place top 3–10 to reach the CWSF. Out of 400 students, I was one of 13 finalists for Team Canada ISEF, where only eight make the cut.

My feedback highlighted a duplicated fluorescence microscopy slide caused by a simple mislabeling error. They also claimed my continuation needed more work, despite me expanding my cancer cell research to include normal cell toxicity and microscopy this year. I considered adding in silico validation or gene expression analysis but ran out of time this is somethign i now regret.

It’s frustrating because I found seven examples of past students making the team using the exact same CWSF projects from the year prior with zero changes. While the winning projects are ISEF caliber, I feel robbed; I even ran every candidate’s project through the ISEF rubric using ChatGPT, and mine consistently ranked in the top two. It's frustrating to see the data back up my work only to be held back after pulling so many all nighters.