2015 Waitlist Spots

[philso]

Originally Posted by mcarobotics

Our team (4595) just got a waitlist spot today. Never been to champs so we are very excited!
However, this has been a hard year for fundraising and we arent sure if we can raise the money to go. What's the minimum amount needed to go, and does anyone have any ideas as to how to get ourselves to St. Louis?

Originally Posted by jds2001

You need to pay the $5K registration fee, and then you need to get yourselves and your pit there. I suppose that you could send a skeleton crew and have the costs be minimal, or have people pay their own way in terms of transportation/lodging.

I'd probably put a minimum (registration + transportation + food + incidentals) at ~$10K, but I'd let other people more experienced opine as well.

Originally Posted by seg9585

Team 4276 got a waitlist spot invite yesterday, but we are going to turn it down due to lack of funding for the registration fee, and too many students have AP exams during that time frame to make it worthwhile. Even for the students that don't have exams, spending $5k to send a skeleton team to participate in another competition does not feel like the best use of our funds, which we would use instead to benefit the the entire team via summer projects and training.

Good luck in St. Louis!

One alternative to sending a team to compete could be to send a few key team members (students and mentors) to visit with the teams in attendance and to learn from them. You would not have the pressure of competing so you can focus on attending the seminars and learning from the teams in attendance. You may also be able to network with more established teams who can help you in future years. Other teams in your area may have a few empty seats on their bus or in their cars. The cost would be your share of the hotel room and the travel and your food. Done right, the return on the investment can be huge.