(See below for eligibility as it applies to specific competition classes)

• Open to middle school, high school, college, and university students.  Home-schooled students of comparable grade levels are also welcome.* 
• Students can design and build the vehicles as an entire class project or school group activity.  The group must be affiliated with a school or a home-school network and/or demonstrate that 1) the participating students are currently enrolled in a high school, college, university, or home-school network and 2) the students are working under the supervision of an adult mentor. 
• Teams must have at least three students with at least one faculty member or adult advisor involved in the process.  One student should be designated as the team spokesperson.
• Teams are discouraged from using complete, commercially available, off-the-shelf, plug-and-play systems.  Teams will not be disqualified from competing for using these types of systems, but the engineering evaluation and technical report score sheets will reflect MATE’s effort to discourage the use of these systems.  See the general rules section of the Design & Building Specifications and Competition Rules document for specific information. 
• The role of the faculty member or adult advisor must be limited to educational and inspirational support.  Actual construction of the vehicle, particularly in the complex electrical and software areas, must be completed by the students.  Students will be questioned extensively by the judges on their role in designing and building the ROV.
• Individuals from industry, businesses, research organizations, and/or government can act as mentors during the design and building process.  The role of these individuals must be limited to technical guidance.  Industry mentors should not participate in the actual construction of the vehicle.
• All teams are required to register on the MATE AlumniWeb site (www.marinetech.org/alumni) as a condition of participating in the competition.  See the Technical Report section within the Engineering and Communication document for more information.

*Middle schools are eligible to compete in RANGER class only.

COMPETITION CLASSES

There are two classes in which teams can compete – EXPLORER and RANGER.  Teams can register to compete in one (but not both) competition class.  Two teams per instructor will be considered as long as one team represents a high school or home school and the other a college or university.  Institutions/instructors interested in entering one team per competition class will also be considered provided that they meet the eligibility requirements for both classes listed below. 

EXPLORER class eligibility:

• Participation in the EXPLORER class is open to community colleges, technical colleges, and universities.
• High schools that previously placed first in the regional contest in their area are eligible to participate in the EXPLORER class.
• High school teams that do not have a regional event in their area are eligible to compete in the EXPLORER class if they previously finished within the top five RANGER teams at the international competition. 
• High school teams that previously competed in the EXPLORER class without placing first in a regional or finishing within the top five RANGER teams at the international competition can continue to compete in the EXPLORER class provided that they finished within the top ten EXPLORER teams at the international competition.   

RANGER class eligibility:

• Participation in the RANGER class is open to high schools, middle schools, and home schools. 
• Community colleges, technical colleges, and universities competing for the first time are also eligible to participate in the RANGER class.
• Schools in the vicinity of one of the 13 regional contests must participate in the regional in their area before moving on to the national competition.  (See below for information about the 13 regional contests.)   

Please see the Competition Scenarios & Mission Tasks, Mission Task Specifications, and Design & Building Specifications and Competition Rules documents for detailed information about the competition classes.