2026 Dates

• Judging from Saturday 5 September to Saturday 19 September.
• Award Ceremony Friday 27 November at UTS Sydney.

There are two major categories in the Young Scientist Awards: Scientific Investigations, and Technological Innovations.

Within each category there are six age groups. Each is judged separately.

The secondary (Years 7-8, Years 9-10 and 11-12 age groups) scientific investigation categories are usually our largest, and are further divided into scientific disciplines:

• • • Biology
    • Chemistry
    • Physics
    • Earth and Environmental Science

It is important to note that the same judging criteria apply to each of these four disciplines. For instance, students entering into Chemistry will be judged primarily on their investigative skills and not necessarily on their chemistry knowledge and use of chemical formulae.

A separate set of criteria is used to judge environmental or astronomical surveys (as these projects do not usually have a hypothesis). However they will compete within the relevant discipline category.

Judging criteria

All projects are judged using a unique set of age-specific judging rubrics. These rubrics are used by the judges to assign a Level 5, 4, 3, 2 or 1 to each student project. Student projects are assessed holistically and judges are trained to assign the level where the project best fits overall. These criteria are closely tied to the processes of Working Scientifically and Working Technologically in the respective NSW Syllabus documents.

Each student is awarded a certificate based on their level of attainment of specified criteria given in the scoring rubric for their age and category:

• High Distinction Certificate for every student who achieves a level 5 against the rubric.
• Distinction Certificate for every student who achieves a level 4 against the rubric.
• Credit Certificate for every student who achieves a level 3 against the rubric.
• Certificates of Participation for every student entry.

We recommend that students read the criteria before starting their project, and also at the end as a checklist that everything has been included. Teachers are welcome to use the rubrics as the basis of school assessment tasks.

Each Sponsored Award has specific judging criteria, outlined on our Prizes webpage.