Question on the topic of World’s qualification. I have looked through the threads, but can’t find a concrete answer. Our state (IN) had 18 spots open for World’s qualification. After last weekend’s state competition 4 “extra” spots were still open after award/teamwork duplication. Those “extra” four spots should go in order to teams who have the highest skills rankings (and didn’t qualify on Sat), correct?
I’m asking for clarification because we have several teams at our school. One of our lesser performing teams (Team C) won the Judges’ award on Sat, so automatically got a bid (yeah!). We have one team (let’s call them Team A) who has been consistently ranked in the Top 15 in IN, and others (Team B, Team C) who have performed well all season, but always ranked lower than our Team A. Both Teams A and B have won an Excellence Award at some point this year. It was announced last night that Team B got into World’s, but not our Team A (the higher achiever). Is there any reason that Team A would have been overlooked for World’s? Parents have emailed directors and they were directed to talk to our coach about the “wait list”. Our coach keeps telling us that she isn’t sure what happened.
Our Team A kids are just wanting answers. They are so hurt and disappointed and just want to understand why. And, unfortunately, they aren’t getting any answers. Any information would be greatly appreciated.
The spots are filled according to the world skills ranking of the teams… The four spots would go to the top 4 teams in skills that have not qualified… just go to robotevents.com and sort the rankings by state and then by division (elem or Middle) and look at that list and take out all the qualified teams and then the top 4 will get the bids…
Thanks, Jamessalvant. That was my assumption too. But, what happened in our case was that our higher ranked team was passed over in favor for one of our lesser ranked teams. Honestly, all of our teams were well below the “4 extra spots” on the rankings, but I understand that teams turn down bids for one reason or another. I’m just looking for possible reasons that our Team B was accepted (and not our higher ranked Team A).
I am just hoping for answers as to why Team A wasn’t selected.
Did you put your teams on the wait list?
When they pull from the wait list it is just random.
If it is a wait list qualification, you should feel free to have any team compete under that number that you see fit, as no team “earned” the spot. However it seems like you already told them, but maybe you could have them all go together in some way…
Is that the case? Are the World’s spots chosen from the waitlist at random? We were told this evening by our coach that a committee made the decision. And, we read on the rules that the bonus spots would be given out to teams based on order of skills ranking. We are making an assumption that our coach did indeed put all of our teams on the waitlist. But, we figured that the waitlist would be granted based on the skills ranking. So, we really don’t understand what is going on at this point!
I guess I would be really disappointed if teams were chosen completely random at that point. I mean…it’s WORLD’S! It seems like a really big thing to be chosen totally at random. I’m really hoping that isn’t the case.
If anyone has any more information on how the waitlist works, I would greatly appreciate it.
I have no reason to believe there is a “committee.”
After the regional/state competition, teams are chosen from the skills list to fill the spots for the state for the extra spots / double qualifications. Some teams qualify but do not register. What do they do with the spots now???
The wait list is not done by skills, and it may just be the chronological order that the teams were added to the wait list. Proximity to the event may also play a role. International teams probably will not get wait list invitations, as they don’t have the time to make travel arrangements / passports / visas… I got a wait list invitation for 10847B. They never ran skills, so it can’t be by skills.
I had a team last year at WORLDS that was paired with 6 “clawbots” out of their 10 matches… In middle school… The best robots are there, but there are plenty of teams that qualified to WORLDS with non-competitive robots, and with awards like sportsmanship qualifying for worlds you may see the level of competitiveness drop even more.
I’m not trying to take away from the event, it’s the highlight of my year and a great way to celebrate the accomplishments of my students. Tell your kids to have fun. Take them all if you can. There are some elementary teams that bring a while busload of kids for one team. For what you are paying, take everything you can out of it!
boilergirl, I wasn’t smart enough to look at the awards page, before looking at all the data, to figure out who you are. I admit I was confused earlier in the day when I noticed 19 teams (not 18) from Indiana are registered for Worlds, with the unexpected team being your A team. According to my calculations (totally unofficial) your teams (not C) are 22nd and 23rd on the list of Indiana teams, and neither A or E should have received an invite.
In my unofficial opinion, your A team got lucky, instead of your E team being unlucky.
I hope you can take that to your parents.
See you there
Steve
To follow up, it appears some teams were pulled from the wait list. This was absolutely not done by skills ranking.
The reason your A team was invited was simply the alphabetical sorting.
Thanks, Steve Hassenplug. We were really hoping that wasn’t the case, but figured it was. According to our calculations as well, neither of our “extra” teams should have been invited. So, we were extra surprised that our A team was extended an invitation. Our coach said that she had entered all of our teams on the waitlist. So, knowing that A made it because of alphabetical principal alone explains the process…but, doesn’t make it easier to explain to our disappointed E team. 
In the case of our E team, they performed well all season, but had a really rough day at state. It seems like there should be a much more qualified way to pick off the waitlist rather than by random. Maybe base it off of world skills ranking instead? (Pick off the waitlist in ranking order?)
Thank you for taking the time to answer, nevertheless! Our kids will all be fighting to be on the “A” team next year…for alphabetical purposes only. 
For next year, at the very first meeting, you could explain how you are going to handle the wait list teams. If any team qualifies through the wait list, you can have some method to choose the best team to go. You could even try to call rec and see if they would change the letter as it really makes no difference to rec which one goes.
Very good suggestion, sankeydd. I like that idea. Our problem this year was that no one really understood how the waitlist worked. And, unfortunately, our A team got a little too excited and bruised our E team’s egos before we really understood the process. We will definitely be taking another approach to the waitlist next year! Thanks again, everyone, for your input! You all provided answers that we were not getting elsewhere! Good luck to everyone going to World’s!