Students begin their research early in the school year. Students doing projects involving invertebrate or vertebrate animals, human subjects, recombinant DNA, tissue, pathogenic agents, or controlled substances, need to file Scientific Review Committee Proposal Papers with the SFBASF before they begin their research. These papers are available from sponsoring teachers, or from the SFBASF website. These papers must be filed before February 1^st. Students who are hoping to participate in SFBASF should file papers even though they do not know whether they will be eligible for the Fair this year.

SFBASF communicates with individual schools and feeder fairs to find out how many prospective projects might be entered in the fair. Quotas are set and registration forms sent out to schools and feeder fairs.

SRC Papers due by February 1^st. Students who come to SFBASF directly from their schools without attending a feeder fair will receive entry forms from their sponsoring teachers. Students who come to SFBASF after competing at a feeder fair will receive their entry forms from the feeder fair officials. Entry forms must be returned by the published deadline.

The week of the Science Fair:

Sunday: Students who have submitted yellow entry blanks by the deadline will be considered for entry to the fair, if there is space available, and will be notified by this date via telephone. Alternates who are not notified by this date should assume that there is not enough space available for them to exhibit their projects and they should not bring their projects to the fair.

Tuesday: Students install their projects according to the published schedule.

Thursday: Project judging takes place in the morning. All exhibitors must be present at the Science Fair from 1:00 pm until approximately 4:30 pm. During this time, students who are being considered for a 1^st or 2^nd place will receive interviews. Other students will remain in the project exhibition area until they are informed that all judging is completed in their category and grade level. During the afternoon all award winners will be notified. Those receiving 1st or 2nd place awards will have been interviewed. Those students receiving 3rd place or special awards will find yellow cards on their projects instructing them to attend the award ceremony on Saturday. 4th place ribbons will have been placed on the appropriate projects by this time. If students leave before they are instructed to, they may be receiving an award on Saturday and not know it. Exhibitors should take home log books and all loose and/or valuable equipment or materials before they leave at the end of the day. Ribbons should be left in place until the project is removed on Saturday.

Saturday: Students who received awards notification on their projects on Thursday should attend the Awards Ceremony on Saturday morning. After the Awards Ceremony, projects may be removed. All projects must be removed on this day—any unclaimed projects will be destroyed due to a lack of storage space.