Page "National Middle School Science Bowl" Paragraph 23

All competing teams are randomly arranged into several round robin groups of seven or eight teams each.

Every team plays every other team in its group once, receiving 2 points for a win, 1 point for a tie, or zero points for a loss.

The top 16 teams across all divisions make it into double elimination ; however, it is done so that the same number of teams ( or as close as possible to this ) in each division make double elimination.