Quote:
Originally Posted by Ian Curtis
The other thing we ought to remember is that attending the Championship is insanely expensive. Even if FIRST made registration free, it would be insanely expensive and many teams would never be able to raise that kind of money to spend on airplane tickets and hotels, when they could better spend that money running a sustainable competitive robotics team. We can serve this 66% at a significantly lower cost with District Championships or their equivalent. You can get 90% of the inspiration for 20% of the cost.
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District Champs are cheaper for teams to attend, but they're tied to the district system. You're not going if you're not good enough, so there's teams that might want/need the inspiration/workshops/etc. of Champs that won't get it cause now you can't waitlist into DCMP or CMP.
Also, I think you have your percentage or noun wrong. You can get 80%-90% of the competition of Champs at MSC, but I'm much less sure about the inspiration. I was only at MSC for a brief bit, but I'm pretty sure it's lacking in spectacle and grandeur compared to Champs. Some students are going to be more inspired by beign part of the big show celebrating this engineering competition than seeing the competition played at the highest level.