Having judged local and regional science fairs, I don’t find AOC’s alleged science fair success that hard to believe. I more than once had difficulty getting other male judges to give the top award to the project I considered the best . . . when the very cute girl’s project was also fairly good (but the cute girl couldn’t explain her project, not how she gathered the data or how she analyzed her results). A disappointing number of projects are done by parents without any involvement by the student, and many of those parents are real scientists.
It was an Intel International Science & Engineering Fair.
Her senior high school project research involved free radicals in antioxidants, which may have reduced degenerative illnesses induced by oxidative stress.
My impression is she is a good short study, able to memorize and speak to studies performed by others giving the appearance of her own derivation. In Texas, we used to call that fraud. Back east above the Mason-Dixon, they call that entrepreneurial genius.