Hungarian Research Student Association Scientific Essay Competition

Do you have your own project and want to give it a try? Do you like writing essays? Well this is competition is for you!

The goal of the Essay competition is to offer you a chance to present your scientific achievements in a written form, and thus get to know the basics of publication.

General rules

You can only apply with your own research project with your own results without any restrictions pertaining to the topic. Students applying for art or other non-scientific research will be rejected.

The competition is open to all students who have obtained their graduation certificate in 2018 or will obtain it in after 2018. There is no minimum age.

An author can enter at most one essay, and one essay can have up to two authors.

Application deadline:

Expected results announcement:

Venue of the competition: Library of Hungarian Academy of Sciences

Application online: online.kutdiak.hu

Applications can be uploaded to the online system

If you have any questions, feel free to contact Vice President Miklós at zsigo.miklos@kutdiak.hu.

Application requirements

• On the application page, the extract of the essay, within the scope of a minimum 1200 and a maximum of 2500 characters, must be submitted
• The essay is required to be attached to the application form in pdf format
• A student is allowed to submit only one application
• An essay can have a maximum of 2 authors
• Both authors are required to be registered in the KutDiak online system
• In case of a multi-author application, only one of the authors is required complete the application form. After that he will have the chance to add more authors
• In case of a multi-author application, the co-authors must confirm their participation before the application deadline (they will be notified by email to do so)
• The application must be marked as finalized before the application deadline, all the applications that are not marked as finalized will be excluded from the competition

Formal requirements

The essay length must be the maximum of 20 pages without attachments, but at least 5 pages of text. The attachments must not exceed 10 pages (pictures, diagrams, citations count as attachments). It is important that all attachments are to be indexed and they are required to have a textual description. The essay must have a title page as well as a table of contents. The pages must be numbered except for the title page. The essay must contain an abstract within the scope of a minimum 1200 and a maximum of 2500 characters.

The text must be written in Times New Roman font, 12 pt, 1,5 interlinear, 2,5 cm left, right, up and down margins and it must be justified to both sides.

At the end of the essay, at least 5 scientific sources must be cited. The sources must be included and should be referenced in the text too. Wikipedia and similar web encyclopaedia sources are not accepted as scientific sources. All sources must be cited like this:

Author’s full name (year of publication): title, publisher’s or journal’s name, year, page number.

The essay cannot contain any personal data or photo of the author, but the pseudonym that was submitted in the online application form, must be included in the submitted work. The school, research camp or the mentors name is also considered as personal data. These should be submitted through the online application form at www.kutdiak.hu.

The membership fee and the method of payment

Only KutDiak members can apply the poster competition.

The requirement for membership is a registration in the online system, and a membership fee (5000 HUF) which should be paid within 10 business days by cash, or wire transfer.

To learn more about membership conditions follow the link below: http://www.kutdiak.hu/en/2015/11/15/how-to-be-a-kutdiak-member/

Application process

You can apply online at www.online.kutdiak.hu after having registered. You can only submit your essay electronically on the specified page of the website in PDF format after the 20th of March 2019.

After this the essays are classified into thematical sections and are forwarded to at least two expert judges per section.

We will delegate an independent committee, which will check the formal and scientific requirements. We again ask you to check the requirements carefully, as we do consider any essays that do not meet the specified requirements.

What kind of application we expect from you?

It is the most important to gather data from a wide spectrum of sources, and to handle and use this data scientifically. The topic can be your own research or it can be how you would conduct a research, what answers you are looking for, and what results you expect. You can write about a topic from a great variety of authors, or you can even analyse literature. The selection of topic of the essay is completely up to you. The main point is that you should focus on working professionally.

• The mentor database, that has the most Hungarian researchers and mentors, can help you write your essay. For more info see www.hu.
• Please choose your sources carefully and cite them correctly!

Which does not fit the directives of the essay competition:

• Collected text downloaded from the Internet
• Essay based on few sources that do not have any new or real scientific statements
• Essay based on a too comprehensive topic, which is superficial and comparable to a school homework assignment

Evaluation of the essay:

The judges will make their decisions based on this scoring sheet:

• Theme of the essay

How original is the theme of the essay? How interesting and actual it is?  (Max: 10 points)

• Elaboration of the topic

How thorough was the author when he wrote about the subject of their research? Does the essay contain any creative work, or is it just a summary? (Max: 20 points)

• Use of sources a professional literature

Does the author cite the scientific sources correctly? Do they use enough citations?

And/or: Use of experimental methods

Does the author use correct experimentational methods? Did they conduct enough experiments? Do the experiments actually prove the hypothesis? (Max: 25 points)

• Structure of the essay

Is the essay structured logically? Does it have a train of thought? (Max: 15 points)

• Value of the illustrations

How original are the illustrations? How much do they contribute to the essay? (Max: 15 points)

• Formal writing

Spelling, appearance and grammar of the essay (Max: 15 points)

• Minus points

Does the essay contain any factually incorrect information? (Max: 40 points)

Prizes

25% of the participants will be rewarded. The winners of each section will be invited to the Kaptalanfüred Research Student Camp at Balaton in the summer of 2019 (the participation is covered by the Research Students’ Movement).

We are looking forward to your application!