My question is mainly concerning the skills and the alliance portion of the award. According to the judges’ score sheet from the State level competition, in order for teams to qualify for the Excellence award, a team must rank in the top 5 skills and the top 8 of the alliance portion of the competition. Are these still the same cut-off numbers for World?
How is the Excellence Award being judged at the World competition? Our team has qualified to compete in the Excellence Award at the World competition. We would like to know how the skills and the Alliance portion of the Excellence award are going to be judged. Will it be the top 5 skills and top 8 alliance of all (400) competing teams or will the judges only consider the teams who have qualified to compete for the Excellence award using only those teams scores to determine the top 5 teams of skills and the top 8 teams from the alliance?
Also, is an excellence, design and STEM award given per division or only overall?
I would suggest you take a look at the Judges Guide for this season which you can find here: https://www.roboticseducation.org/documents/2018/10/vex-iq-challenge-judge-guide-2018-2019.pdf.
Based on the wording you used that sounds like it came from the criteria last year. If you still have questions after reviewing the Judges Guide from this season I would suggest contacting your RECF representative.
I read over the Judges Guide and it does not answer my question specifically for the World competition. Are the candidates trying to score in the top 20 percent skills and top 10 ranked qualifying teams of all 400 World teams or is this ranking for the teams competing for the Excellence award?
I am referring to page 9 bullet point 2
To determine the final Excellence winner at an event, Judges should consider the following for each of
these candidates:
• Quality of their Engineering Notebook and design process.
• Their on-field performance (i.e., are they in the top 10 ranked teams in the qualifying matches?
and are they in the top 5 or top 20%, whichever is larger, of the teams in skills scores?). Judges
should use the ranking reports from Tournament Manager or the VEX Via app.
• The team’s dynamics: is the team student-centered and do they exhibit good sportsmanship?
Were they considered for other Judged awards?
Excellence is a very subjective award. My advice is not to get too tied up in the scores. Just do your best on the notebook and be ready to answer questions in your interviews.
Last year, our organisation won MS Excellence Award at Worlds. The team I was in ranked 4th in finals in the Science Division, and won the Amaze Award. We didn’t rank too highly in skills, but from what I remember we were in the top 50. We were definitely not the best team in the teamwork and skills aspect of the competition, and we knew that we were never going to be beforehand, so as well as focussing on this aspect of the competition we tried things that we thought other teams hadn’t done before, and that were unique to our organisation and country. Small things like this can make you stand out more than just teamwork and skills, and potentially help you reach a higher level at the World Championships.