The award prizes seem odd with first place winning $25,000 while the other finalists win only $1,000 each. I feel uncomfortable about that "winner takes all" approach as it increases the importance of luck and decreases that of effort. Is it common in the United States?

The only other one of this sort of scope of which I am aware is the science and engineering competition held by Intel [0]: US $75,000 for winner, 2 awards of $50,000 each, and 17 best of category awards of US $5,000 ea. Then smaller dollar amounts for the next 5 finishers in each category.

[0] http://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/education/competition...