Baja SAE consists of three regional competitions that simulate real-world engineering design projects and their related challenges. 
Engineering students are tasked to design and build an off-road vehicle that will survive the severe punishment of rough terrain and in the East competition, water.
The object of the competition is to provide SAE student members with a challenging project that involves the planning and manufacturing tasks found when introducing a new product to the consumer industrial market. Teams compete against one another to have their design accepted for manufacture by a fictitious firm. Students must function as a team to not only design, build, test, promote, and race a vehicle within the limits of the rules, but also to generate financial support for their project and manage their educational priorities.
Baja SAE competitions consist of two types of events, static and dynamic, each of which is divided into number of challenges for participating teams. However, Baja SAE East competition is not identical to Baja SAE Midwest competition, and they both are somewhat different from Baja SAE West competition. Below you can see comparison table for all three competitions.
| East | Midwest | West | East | Midwest | West | ||
| Static Events - 300 points | Dynamic Events - 700 points | ||||||
| Design | Speed | ||||||
| Report | 100 | 100 | 50 | Acceleration | 50 | 50 | 100 |
| Evaluation | 150 | 150 | 100 | Top Speed | 50 | 50 | -- |
| Cost | Power | ||||||
| Report | 10 | 10 | 10 | Climb / Pulling | 100 | 100 | 100 |
| Prod. Cost | 40 | 40 | 40 | Suspension | |||
| Presentation | -- | -- | 100 | Suspension | 50 | 100 | 50 |
| Specialty | |||||||
| Water | 50 | -- | -- | ||||
| Rock Crawl | -- | -- | 50 | ||||
| Durability | |||||||
| Endurance | 400 | 400 | 400 | ||||
| Subtotal | 300 | 300 | 300 | 700 | 700 | 700 | |
| TOTAL = 1000 | |||||||
