divisions at nationals
 

how does FIRST choose what division a team is placed in at Championships? IS there any order to it? Or is it completely random?

its random

Cory

I think last year they took chunks of ten teams or so, numbered in order, and alternated where each chunk went. So teams 1-10 were in Arch, 11-20 were in Curie, 21-30 were in Newton, 31-40 were in Einstein, and so on.

That can't be true, because 25 was in archimedes...

It may have been blocks of five or something to that effect, but verdeyw is correct..

If I remember correctly, they first took all the regional winners and spread them out evenly between the divisions. Then they went back and assigned the rest of the teams in blocks.

No Joel is correct it was chunks of 5. They did not split up the number of regional winners per grouping.

From what I remembered they split up the regional winners so each division get the same number of them, then they split up finalists and high ranking teams and evenly spread them out too.

Then the rest of the teams are spreaded out randomly.

This is to make sure no one divisiion have more competitive teams than others.

Yeah but in the Newton Division last year it went 173,174,175,176,177 and then went higher so they couldn't have split high teams up that much.

Actually, last year it was based on numerous items including:
# of events balancing of fields and other items.

Initally it was 1 - field A; 2 - field B; 3 - field C; 4 - field D; etc...

That was the base and then a few items where moved around too.