@brodywb my subjective impression is that there is a very high correlation between teams with top skill scores and those attending Signature Events.
It would be great if students who are good with vexdb.io scripting could analyze the data and tell us actual numbers.
I don’t have specific examples, but RECF said in the past that abolition of the top skill qualifications was partially done to combat alleged pay-to-win behavior.
Even before Signature Events you could see the correlation between amount of the investments that teams could make into their equipment, curriculum, travel, etc… and the average performance on the field and chances to qualify, as a results.
There is a small percentage of kids that have so much passion for robotics and talent for engineering that they could overcome even the longest odds, but for the rest of us something as simple as having or not having access to the full field 24x7 makes a lot of difference.
I think that distribution of talent is pretty even between the kids going to the affluent or disadvantaged schools. Given equal opportunity they will do equally well. However, on the example of our local area teams, I can easily see a pattern in results between a private school that could afford a dedicated robotics instructor, expensive equipment and curriculum, and a large public school from less than affluent neighborhood, where only senior teams get to use aluminum in their designs.
I think, VEX has a unique opportunity to democratize the system by tweaking the reward criteria and, also, by giving all teams equal access to the more game relevant curriculum.
In fact, it could cost VEX Robotics and RECF next to nothing. Just enable VexForum Wiki and a lot of mentors like @biglesliep will create quality content available and easily accessible to all students - I will certainly do.