[poulpy123]

I'm baffled by the idea of making science competition with so much prize money for teenagers. For me it's antithetic with the goal of scientific research and can only fail in the long term. As a side note, the real responsible here is not the tennagers, but the organizers that didn't manage to catch a fraud so obvious

[strikelaserclaw]

most of these teenagers already come from upper middle class (professional parents) backgrounds, they don't need the money, they know that winning it is a guaranteed admission to MIT or Harvard. Getting admitted to top schools today is an order of magnitude tougher than it was even 10 years ago.

[poulpy123]

Maybe it's different in the US but everywhere else in the world 50K is a really huge amount of money for everyone but the 0.1% richest.But anyway if as you same it's also a ticket for the best schools, the rewards is still huge beside the money. I would even say it's even worse like that, because attending the best school give so many opportunities

[xnorswap]

The amount of prize money shocked me too, I put it down to a culture I don't understand.

See also $50,000 prize money for what's called a "Spelling Bee": Asking children to spell words correctly.

I feel so far removed from understanding that culture that I feel like I can't criticize it.