Aptitude Aplenty

The woman who sits there silently, too timid to ask, waiting until the end of class, loses half the lecture, Mann says. The boy in the front row, peppering the teacher with questions, gets more response, and more out of the lecture.

"I wish I could learn that style now," she says. "Even now, I try to force myself to ask questions when I don't understand. It depends very much on who else is in that room. I'm still too hesitant in questioning."

That's how girls are socialized, she says, which doesn't matter quite as much in high school as it does later. Those high test scores have saved many a girl, she says. But later it does matter, and very much.

"Math is a very social activity," Mann says. "You might not think of it as an oral culture, but there's a lot of stuff that is known but not written down. Maybe it's people traveling and giving seminars on last month's results, or it's three people having lunch and one is explaining something to the other two. That's how it's learned."

This, she says, as if speaking directly to Summers, is not biology. It's culture.

The lobby of the St. Regis Hotel at 16th and K streets NW is replete with crystal chandeliers and an elaborately carved ceiling, decorous and hushed. It's a Saturday in March, and the 40 Intel finalists have gathered here for the final round of judging--an excruciating examination of their work and intellect by a group of eminent U.S. scientists.

The 25 boys and 15 girls have been winnowed from 1,600 competitors from across the country. They are, by any measure, an extraordinary group of students: 10 have perfect scores on their SATs; 15 are first in their class; all are sought after by the nation's most selective colleges.

When Abby learned she was an Intel finalist, she called the Harvard admissions personnel to add that to her application. They already knew. Within a few weeks of the Intel competition, Abby will be weighing admissions offers from Yale, Brown, Cornell, Harvard and MIT, among others. But today, dressed in a dark pantsuit with a violet blouse, Abby looks subdued. She had to give up her role as the villainous queen in "Once Upon a Mattress" during its second weekend run. An understudy took her place so she could compete in Intel, which is proving a lot more stressful than she expected.

The 12 judges -- computer scientists, mathematicians, engineers, physicians, chemists and physicists -- have divided into groups of three and take turns quizzing the kids in second-floor rooms of the hotel. There were two sessions for each student on Friday, and there are two more scheduled for today. The judges aren't asking them about their research projects yet. Instead they grill them on their overall knowledge. Where did the carbon in your bodies come from? What is the latitude of your city? What's the most ingenious invention in history?

"We try to push them but not upset them," Vera Rubin explains. "It's not a question of knowing an answer. We want to know how they think. We're trying to identify the people who will be the leaders in the next generation of scientists."

Abby is trying to enjoy herself, she says, but she's not sure she's doing well. "I don't want to look stupid," she says. "I wish there were more astronomy questions. I haven't had biology for two years."

Sherri arrives in the lobby, somber in her light-brown pantsuit. She's already finished her four sessions with the judges. She calls the first round a minor disaster. She had questions about physics, which she hadn't taken since freshman year, and about photographic processes. "I thought it would be more philosophical, not actual science," she says. "Half of me wishes I could go back. By the end I was like . . . I want to stay so you can ask me more biology questions. I wanted to redeem myself for the physics question."

Meeting so many brilliant students and struggling to answer so many difficult questions has been the most humbling experience of her life, she says. At one particularly low point, she called home. "Daddy," she says she told her father, "I'm not sure I belong here."

Zheng Geng, an engineer, tried to reassure her that she did. "You're just as able to handle this as anyone else," she remembers him telling her.

Soon she and the other finalists pile into vans to the National Academy of Sciences to set up their projects. In the morning the judges will finally ask about them. Then they will spend four hours on their feet Sunday and Monday afternoons, answering a steady stream of questions from the public. "Tell me about your project." Or, "How did you get the idea for your project?" Or, "What's a seizure?"

By the end of the two public sessions, they're exhausted, hardly having had time to take a gulp of water from the bottles tucked behind their display boards. "My feet hurt," Sherri says. "I have to sit down," declares her Blair classmate Michael Forbes.

And still they have to do it again, now dressed in evening gowns and tuxedos, gathered with 700 scientists, parents, teachers and mentors for the awards dinner at the Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center. Once more, Abby and Sherri, glamorous in clouds of blue and strapless red, stand at their boards, explaining the intricacies of seizures and stars.

After everyone eats dinner, it's finally time to announce the winners. Abby, Sherri and the others bravely line up on the grandiose stage, which looks like a high-tech Greek temple with its four stately columns and two huge television screens. Craig Barrett, Intel's CEO, takes the microphone to anoint 10 winners.

All along, Abby and Sherri have been telling themselves they won't be among those 10, though it's hard not to hope that they're wrong. The announcement begins with the 10th-place winner. When Abby and Sherri hear the name Po-Ling Loh, from Madison, Wis., for her project, "Closure Properties of D2p in Finite Groups," whatever hopes they still have fade. The bar is really high, if that's No. 10, Sherri remembers thinking.

If they are disappointed, they don't have time to show it because the seventh-place winner is announced, and it's their friend and classmate Justin Kovac, who did research on hurricanes. For Abby and Sherri, standing next to each other on stage, it's a big YESSS! They're still beaming when David Bauer, a New Yorker they've come to admire over the last few days for his sharp mind, genial personality and research on biochemical agents, gets first prize amid an explosion of confetti. Of the 10 winners, three are girls.

When they leave the stage, their parents are there with hugs. The winners are rushed off for interviews. Slowly, the hubbub subsides, and the buses pull up to take the kids back to the hotel. There isn't much time for regret. Tomorrow the 40 will part, amid damp eyes and embraces. For Abby and Sherri, AP tests await, along with prom and graduation.

Abby decides she will go to Yale. Sherri is headed for Harvard, where, in May, Summers announces plans to spend at least $50 million over 10 years to recruit and promote female scientists and engineers on his faculty.

"Universities like Harvard," he tells reporters during a conference call, "were designed a long time ago, in many respects, by men and for men." It's time to start changing that, he says. Time to make sure girls like Abby Fraeman and Sherri Geng don't encounter the same roadblocks as the women who have come before them.

Kathy Lally is an editor in The Post's Business section. She will be fielding questions and comments about this article Monday at 1 p.m. at washingtonpost.com/liveonline.