Sharing Raw Scores and Stickies with Your Team

What are Stickies?

We strongly encourage sharing the Stickies with your team right away, as they typically are the most meaningful for the kids. Take the time to go over each comment the appraisers made! Team managers have been known to make color copies of all the stickies so that each team member can keep a copy to enjoy for years to come.

What are Raw Scores?

Raw Scores are NOT like grades in school! Make sure your team understands that getting 50% of the points is not the same as getting a 50% on a test in school. Getting 50% of the points is VERY GOOD; getting 50% on a test in school is not.

Here’s what I like to tell teams:

  • The same group of Appraisers sees all the challenge solutions for a particular competition level and applies the same set of criteria to each scored element.
  • Some of our Appraisers are alumni of the program, and they understand better than anyone what it takes to get to a tournament with a solution.
  • In terms of actual scores:
    • If a scored item gets 25% of the possible points, that’s good! All scored items appeared in some form and the team solved that part of the challenge.
    • A scored item with 50% of the possible points is very good! The scored items were there and showed creativity, some refinement, and/or an unusual approach.
    • Should a scored item get 75% of the possible points, that is really good! Not only were the required items there, but the creativity and refinement were high, or perhaps a unique idea was included.
    • Very few teams ever see close to 100% of the possible points, but if they do the Appraisers were blown away by something truly memorable!

Whatever the scores, know that the Appraisers really enjoyed watching the team’s presentation and learning about how they created their solution.