The current National Champions are Xiao-ke Lu and Jacquelynn Lin from Princeton University.
The Novice (first year) division was won by Cayden Pocrass and Ellena Kim from the University of California, Los Angeles.
Rounds progress through octofinals, then quarterfinals, semifinals, and finals, where the National Champion is named.
Seeding for octofinals is based on the cumulative points the team had at the end of preliminary rounds.
In contrast with most major BP tournaments, such as WUDC, USUDC is notable in that since 2020 it has used a tapered scoring system awarding different multiples of the "3, 2, 1, 0" point scheme depending on the round.
This leap-frogging over other teams in higher rooms is widely acknowledged, though people may not fully understand how disruptive this is to getting an accurate ordering on the tab.The problem of sorting teams based on skill in order to generate a fair break is compared by the authors to the Brazil nut effect, where the largest nuts in a package of mixed nuts rise to the top of the container during transport because of shaking.
[5] Barnes et al.'s analysis shows that this phenomenon is similarly present in standard BP scoring, and that many different tapered scoring systems, where the amount of points awarded decreases each preliminary round, significantly outperform the standard equal round point system in producing skill-accurate breaks.
It was founded in 2013 in order to organize the British Parliamentary debate circuit in the United States.