TSA TEAMS: A Complete Guide

Maybe you’re the type who likes challenging themselves by creating with their hands or applying math and science skills to real-world problems. High school can only offer you so much, so if you’re looking for more experiences, you can consider joining TSA TEAMS. In this article, we’ll explain what TSA TEAMS is, how to participate, and how you can win.

• What Is TSA TEAMS?
• TSA TEAMS Awards and Prizes
• How to Qualify for TSA TEAMS
• How to Get into TSA TEAMS
• How to Win TSA TEAMS
• TSA TEAMS Previous Winners
• Frequently Asked Questions
• Takeaways

What Is TSA TEAMS?

TSA TEAMS (Tests of Engineering Aptitude, Mathematics, and Science) is an annual nationwide STEM competition by the Technology Student Association for middle and high school students. It challenges teams of 2 to 4 students to work together, applying their math and science knowledge to solve real-world engineering problems.

Each year’s competition is built around a theme that ties all the challenges together. These themes let you explore how STEM can address societal or global issues in creative ways.

State competitions

During state TSA TEAMS competitions, students across the country compete at local sites for rankings and awards within their state. You can compete right at your own school under the supervision of your coach at an official host site, often a local college or university that volunteers to host TEAMS events.

State competitions have four parts:

• Design/Build Challenge. This is a hands-on building task related to the theme. Using a kit of assigned materials, your team should design and construct a solution to an engineering challenge within a time limit.
• Multiple Choice Exam. This is a rigorous math and science test focused on real-world engineering scenarios. The questions typically require applying algebra, physics, or logical reasoning to engineering problems
• Essay. Your team researches a topic and collaboratively writes a formal essay proposing a solution or analysis of the challenge. This component develops your research and technical writing skills..
• Mathematical Modeling. This is a problem-solving exercise where your team develops a mathematical model within 60 minutes to address a given scenario or dataset. This tests your ability to apply higher-level math and reasoning to open-ended problems.

National competitions

After all state competitions are completed, the scores are compared nationally. If your team’s overall score ranks among the top in the country, you become eligible to compete for the “Best-in-Nation” title at nationals.

The National TSA TEAMS competitions take place during the annual National TSA Conference in late June. For 2026, it will be held from June 22 to 26 at the TSA National Conference in Washington, D.C.

The components are the same, except the essay is replaced by a presentation. Here, your team will be given a surprise engineering challenge or scenario at the conference and you should develop a digital presentation about it on the same day. The prompt for the presentation is revealed during an orientation meeting at nationals, and you’ll only have a few hours to prepare your slideshow or video.

TSA TEAMS Awards and Prizes

One of the great things about TSA TEAMS is that every participant is recognized for their effort, and top-performing teams earn special awards. Here are the different awards and prizes you can get when you join:

• Digital participation certificate for every student competitor.
• Top three teams in each level (middle school and high school) per state receive digital winner badges.
• Top three teams in each level per state receive “Best-in-State” certificates.
• First-place team in each level per state receives a “Best-in-State” banner for their school.
• Best-in-Nation (overall national champions) trophies/plaques awarded on stage at the National TSA Conference.
• Recognition for 2nd and 3rd place overall in each level.
• Component awards (e.g., highest scores in Multiple Choice, Design/Build, Mathematical Modeling, and Presentation).
• Public recognition in TSA conference results and often in school or local media

How to Qualify for TSA TEAMS

TSA TEAMS is open to all students, whether or not your school has a Technology Student Association chapter.

Eligibility

To be eligible for TSA TEAMS, you must:

• Be a middle school or high school student
• Be in a team of two to four students
• Have an adult coach or advisor

Required documents

To participate in TSA TEAMS, you need to submit the following documents:

• Team registration form. This is usually done online through the TSA TEAMS registration portal. Your coach will fill out an online form with your school’s information and your team members’ names/grade levels.
• Host Site Request form (if applicable). If your team plans to compete at a designated host site (like a university location), you would need to fill out a Host Site Request form to request a spot at that location. This form is typically provided after you register (usually in your coach’s online account or confirmation email). If you’re competing at your own school, you won’t need this.
• Consent/release forms. For the national competition or certain states, there might be participant consent forms, media release forms, or code of conduct agreements that students and parents need to sign.

Contest fees

The first team from each participating school has a registration fee of $150. If your school enters more than one team, they’ll only need to pay $100.

However, you get discount codes if you’re from a:

• School with an active TSA chapter
• Project Lead the Way (PLTW) school
• Engineering by Design (EbD) school

TSA provides a discount code that your coach can enter during registration to apply the reduced fee.

The registration fee covers all the competition materials for your team. These include the written tests, design/build challenge instructions, scoring and judging, and any digital resources. It also covers awards like certificates and digital badges.

Registration deadline

Here are the important dates for TSA TEAMS:

How to Get into TSA TEAMS

Want to see how far you can get in TSA TEAMS? Here’s a step-by-step guide on how to participate:

Step 1: Form your team.

Talk to friends, classmates, or even members of a school STEM club to put together a group of 2 to 4 students who are interested in STEM and want to compete.

Try to aim for a mix of skills and strengths. For example, if you’re great at math, you could find someone who’s good at writing, and another at building things. It’s also important that you all get along and can work well together under pressure. After all, you’ll be spending many hours brainstorming and solving problems as a group, so choose teammates who can communicate and collaborate well.

Step 2: Find a coach.

Next, you need an adult coach to oversee your team. If you’re doing this through school, a science or math teacher would be a good choice.

Show them information about TEAMS and ask if they’d be willing to be your team’s coach. You should also tell them about a coach’s responsibilities, particularly being the one to register the team on the TSA TEAMS website and will be the primary contact. If you’re not in a school setting or a teacher isn’t available, a parent or a community volunteer can serve as a coach.

Step 3: Get registered.

Once a coach is on board, you can work with them to register your team online. They’ll need to go to the official TEAMS registration site and fill out the form with your team name, school, and member details. During registration, they will also take care of the payment or purchase order for the registration fee.

After registration, your coach should gain access to a coach online account on the TSA TEAMS site with important resources. Make sure your coach checks this because it will have things like the essay prompt (when released), practice questions, and other instructions for competition day.

Step 4: Prepare for the competition.

With your team registered, the next few weeks or months are all about preparation. Sit down as a team and plan out how to handle each component. We’ll talk about tips for the different components in a later part of the article.

Try to set a regular schedule to meet with your teammates and coach. For example, you can have weekly meetings after school to check progress on the essay and do practice questions, and maybe a longer session on a weekend to simulate the design/build.

Step 5: Compete in the state competition.

Bring all required materials as instructed by TEAMS. At your competition site, your coach or proctor will give you the sealed instructions for each component when it’s time to begin. Then it’s go time!

Once the entire state competition window closes, TSA will compile the scores and release the state rankings. If your overall score is among the top in the nation, you’ll get an invitation to the national TEAMS competition.

If you qualify for nationals, you’ll need to register for the conference and confirm your spot in the national competition quickly (since slots can fill up). After that, it’s back to preparing and then competing again.

How to Win TSA TEAMS

Participating in TSA TEAMS will challenge your team to work collaboratively and use your math and science knowledge to solve real-world problems. Winning the competitions will be a huge boost of confidence. Not to mention, it will also show admissions officers that your engineering knowledge and skills go beyond those of a typical high school student.

So, here are some tips to help increase your chances of winning TSA TEAMS:

1. Build a well-rounded, cohesive team.

Winning starts with the people on your team and how well they work together. Aim to build a team where each member has a certain strength they can contribute to—so you can maybe have a team with a mix of talents in math, science, writing, and hands-on building.

Once your team is set, practice working together effectively. Good teamwork means communicating clearly, dividing tasks smartly, and resolving disagreements productively.

Try to establish a process for making decisions as well (like voting or consensus-building) and listen to each other’s perspectives. After all, you don’t want to spend six or seven hours just agreeing on a presentation topic because everyone has different ideas.

2. Understand the theme.

Every year, TSA TEAMS provides a theme that will be the context for all the problems. TSA also offers some starting points on how you can incorporate it in different engineering disciplines.

For example, the theme for 2026 is “Engineering the Past.” Here are some ideas that can get you started:

• Civil engineering. How do you design and restore infrastructure like historic bridges, roads, railroads, and canals over changing terrains?
• Architectural engineering. How can you integrate HVAC, lighting, and other modern systems into old buildings without damaging their character?
• Environmental engineering. How do you make old buildings more sustainable and energy efficient when updating them for modern use?

As soon as the essay prompt is released and the design/build materials list is out, get to work on incorporating the theme.

3. Practice!

TSA provides sample challenges for the design/build, multiple choice, and essay components, as well as season-specific practice materials. Checking them lets you know how tasks are framed and what “good” answers look like for the competition. Here are some more specific tips for the different components:

Essay

TSA posts the prompt, regulations, and scoring rubric in December. You can treat the rubric as your outline for what type of content or how to answer the prompt.

Before you start writing your essay, build a short reading list of high-quality sources (like journals and government reports) and link each to a specific claim—then present a thesis, two or three focused points with data, and a feasible solution with trade-offs.

Finish a full draft at least a week before the submission links go live in your coach’s account, then do a technical edit (for facts, units, and calculations) and a style edit (for flow and clarity).

Multiple choice

High school teams get 40 questions in 60 minutes. Every time you and your teammate do drills, replicate that time window so you learn how fast you need to move and where you have problems.

After each session, analyze any mistakes—whether in the units and formulas used or in a misread graph—and try to incorporate the same concepts in the next practice.

Design/build

For this component, you’ll need to practice working with limited time and materials. TSA posts the official list of materials in December for state competitions. You should ideally stock that exact list early and run short, timed builds (around 30 to 45 minutes) that you score against likely criteria such as strength, accuracy, or repeatability. Practicing for this component helps build your ingenuity and time management skills.

If you advance to nationals, you’ll receive designated materials only on-site and may use just those items.

Mathematical modeling

As the name suggests, this component will require you to create a mathematical model that can help create a solution based on given data. You’ll need to do this in 60 minutes.

You can try practicing with open-ended problems like “create a model for the spread of a virus in a population.” One thing you can try is to assign one teammate to write assumptions and variables, one to set up equations or a spreadsheet, one to probe edge cases, and one to summarize the model.

4. Manage your time and tasks effectively.

Develop a clear game plan before the competition begins. For example, decide in advance who will be primarily responsible for each section. Maybe one person leads the design/build, and another coordinates the exam solving, but of course everyone contributes ideas.

Have a checklist of things to double-check: Did we answer every question? Did we include our team ID on every document? Did we bring all the required items?

A well-organized team can sometimes beat a “smarter” but disorganized team simply by executing cleanly and efficiently.

TSA TEAMS Previous Winners

To inspire you, here are a few examples of previous TSA TEAMS winners and their achievements in the competition:

• Harker School (San Jose, CA). A team of Harker students, led by captain Jackie Yang, earned First Place Best-in-Nation in the 2018 TEAMS competition for the freshman/sophomore division. They also earned 1st in the Problem Solving component and ranked in the top five for other categories.
• New Canaan High School (Connecticut). During the 2023 TEAMS competitions, a New Canaan HS team won first place in Connecticut and achieved the second-highest overall score in the nation.
• Parkersburg High School (West Virginia). The PHS “JETS” TEAMS team earned Third Place in the Presentation component among 117 teams nationwide at the 2024 National TEAMS Competition.

Frequently Asked Questions

1. What is the purpose of TSA conferences?

TSA conferences bring together members for competitions, leadership development, and networking. As a participant, you can expect hands-on activities, talks, and workshops.

2. What is TSA competition attire?

TSA competition attire is the official royal blue TSA shirt with gray dress pants or a knee-length skirt, plus appropriate dress shoes.

3. What are TSA awards?

TSA awards recognize student achievement and service. At conferences, competitive events honor finalists and top-three teams with recognition and trophies. However, there are also year-round programs like the Achievement Program’s bronze, silver, and gold levels for documented leadership, STEM immersion, and development activities.

Takeaways

• TSA TEAMS is a team-based STEM competition for middle and high school students built around an annual theme. You’ll tackle multiple-choice, design/build, mathematical modeling, and an essay at state, while the nationals swaps the essay for a same-day presentation.
• The state event is a one-day contest held in January or February at your school, a partner site, or a host campus. Top scorers will advance to the nationals.
• Thinking if TSA TEAMS is right for you? We can help you plan your extracurriculars so you can apply for competitions and programs that align with your goals.