How many teams qualify to advance per event?

VEX Robotics Competition Discussion VRC
#1

In previous years, 12 teams (all semifinalists) in each local competition advanced to the state (or national, for non-US teams)-level competition, with the addition of some extra teams for Skills performance and other awards. But with the switch from best-of-3 to best-of-1 and from an 8-seed bracket with 3-team alliances to a 16-seed bracket with 2-team alliances (as well as those special rules for smaller competitions), I’m uncertain as to just how many teams will qualify to advance from each local-level competition.

I was unable to locate anything addressing this in either this year’s VRC manual or any of the other resources I looked at. My team is not yet registered for this year’s competition, so we cannot use the Q&A system. If this information is truly unknown, would somebody be able to submit a query to the Q&A system so we can have an answer?

#2

We are waiting for the first draft of this years qualifying criteria to go public.

Link to last years can be found here

#3

Last year’s was dated July 28 - so I was assuming that this year’s qualify criteria would come out in late summer. For some reason, I seem to remember that it is connected to the EP Summit and is not published until after that takes place. I could be wrong, though.

#4

Correct. It is published after the EP Summit. We learn about it and talk about it there before they release it.

#5

Thank you for the clarification!

#6

can someone post it here if they remember when it comes out?

#7

The number of teams who qualify from each event depends on the region.

If your region keeps the same number of events and the same number of spots at your state/national championship, I expect that all 8 semifinalists, all Excellence Award winners, all Design Award winners, and all Robot Skills Champions will qualify for your state or national championship.

If the number of events in your region grows, or if the number of spots at your State Championship shrinks, each event may qualify fewer teams than before. If this happens, the way spots are given out would likely be similar to the list on page 2 of the qualifying criteria PDF, but subtracting the number of third picks (1, 2, or 4) from the number of spots.

If you want to know how many teams from your region qualify from each event, you would need to ask your regional support manager (here is a list of them). However, they likely won’t know this for sure until at least late July.

P.S. I predict that this year, events that qualify 33 or more teams (such as the three California State Championships) might qualify all of the quarterfinalists. If your region has an event that is twice as large as the others (and has at least 32-33 teams competing), this may happen with a local event there.

#8

I’ll try to remember to post a link in this thread when that happens, and I’m sure someone else will make a separate thread about it, too.

Also, I expect that once the Qualifying Criteria is updated, the link @tabor473 and I posted will go to the new version instead of last year’s.

#9

The new qualification criteria document has been released now, but the link has changed.

Here is the new link (from @tabor473’s post in another thread): https://www.roboticseducation.org/documents/2018/06/vrc-qualifying-criteria-2018-19.pdf

For an event with 12 spots, the teams qualifying for the state or national championship would be the eight semifinalists, the Robot Skills Champion, the Excellence Award winner, the Design Award winner, and the Amaze Award winner.

#10

Here are the worlds spots per region

#11