Important changes this year
Eligibility
Schools from Washington, Idaho, Montana, and Oregon now welcome to compete. If you're a resident of one of these four states and attend a high school within your state, you qualify to participate.
Challenges
New biofuels challenge. This new challenge asks students to show how biofuels can answer national or global energy needs. The multidisciplinary collaboration challenge is no longer an option.
Registration
No pre-registration option. The competition no longer offers pre-registration to hold spots for teams. All information must be complete and all required materials, including student and advisor forms, must be received before a team will be considered officially registered.
March 1, 2012: Registration opens. Register early! Only 175 teams may register. If you wish to register but all 175 spots in the competition are taken, you may join the waiting list. To do so, you must deliver all required registration information. If registered teams drop, teams on the waiting list will be notified and moved onto the list of competing teams.
April 2, 2012: Registration closes. No additional teams may register or join the waiting list after this date. For your team(s) to be guaranteed a spot in the competition, all registration information, including forms, must be completed and received by April 2.
May 2, 2012: Last day to make changes to registration information. By this date, the information you have provided about teams and projects will be considered final. The category in which a project is entered cannot be changed after this date.
Awards
Predefined award amounts for each student winner. Awards for the four challenges have changed. Instead of a sum to be divided among student team members, predefined monetary award amounts will go to each individual on a winning team. Amounts awarded to schools will remain the same as in previous years.
- First place: $1,000 for each student team member / $5,000 for the school
- Second place: $750 for each student team member / $3,000 for the school
- Third place: $500 for each student team member / $1,500 for the school
- Fourth place: $250 for each student team member / $1,000 for the school
More awards for newly participating schools. This year Imagine Tomorrow will bestow up to 17 awards honoring the best project by a team from a newly participating school, up from 9 awards last year. The competition offers one of these awards to the top new team/school from each federal congressional district in the four competing states (PDF): Washington (9 districts), Oregon (5 districts), Montana (1 district), and Idaho (2 districts). A newly participating school is one that has not participated in Imagine Tomorrow in the previous four years. This year's award winners will receive $500 for their school and $100 for each student team member.
Prize money distribution. Prize money will be distributed to all team members registered as project participants as of May 2, 2012. It is up to the team advisor and team members to provide information to competition organizers to facilitate payment. If such information is not provided for some students, their prize money will be forfeited—not reallocated to other team members.
Judging
New full-day judging format. Finalists will no longer be identified after the morning session. Instead, judges will review all teams within their respective categories throughout the day (with a midday break). The 2012 judging schedule looks like this:
- 8:00 – 11:30 a.m., judging
- 11:30 a.m. – 12:30 p.m., private viewing of projects by judges
- 1:30 – 3:30 p.m., judging continues