[AllenGregoryIV]

This doesn't make me any happier about getting rid of feedback. A mentor being in the room is a huge disadvantage, if you have to take away a presenter spot from a student. I've never heard of a chairman's award winning team that had a mentor in the room, has anyone else?

I'm glad they are trying to find ways for teams to continue to improve but these are all general things and not specific feedback. It takes someone going over your entire submission to really give you feedback on both what they liked and what they thought you could improve on. Looking at other winning teams' presentations and essays is a good idea but we also don't want every presentation and every team to look the same. To me that's what we are encouraging by not giving individual feedback but instead saying here look at these teams that did it right. This won't encourage innovation since you have no way to know if something worked unless you happen to win and even then you don't know if your innovative presentation style or essay writing was noticed by the judges.