It is easy to see that they are eliminating designers each week. Every week there are some who are "best" and some who are "worst". It is easy to rank the final two, one goes home, and the one who beat the loser stays for another week. You can figure out the ranking when three worst are standing there and one is told that they are safe and can leave the runway. It is not hard to figure that person ranked higher to the judges than the final two standing there. Usually they tell you who the winner is, who ranked highest of everybody that week, but they don't always tell you who was second best or third best. Sometimes there are two winners, or two losers. The ones who are just "in", not winners, not losers, but their scores have qualified them to move on to the next round are all tied, not higher or lower than each other, but certainly higher than the bottom three, yet lower than the top three.
I scored the nine seasons based on how many people were below each designer each week of the season. The season was measured from the first episode until going on to Fashion Week. Everybody knows who came in first, second and third each season. (Or you can look it up). What hasn't been clear is how many designers had to be beaten by each one of the season top placeholders.
By ranking the season with one standard method it is easy to see that the contest has gotten much harder and many more designers need to be beaten to stand out as the clear winners deserving to be at Fashion Week.
Jay McCarroll won his place at Fashion Week by defeating 37 other designers during the weeks of Season 1. It was a cakewalk. Next season things got decidedly tougher -- Chloe defeated 55 other designers over the weeks of her season. It was still medium hard for a few more seasons: Nobody broke Santino's record of defeating 59 designers until season 5. For all his fame and celebrity, Christian Siriano's record of beating 55 designers during Season 4 would not have been good enough to get him into Fashion Week by Season 6, where Korto Momolu beat 69 other designers attaining her ticket to Fashion Week. That record survived until Season 8, when both Mondo and Gretchen defeated 70 designers each to earn their place at Fashion Week.
The current winner, Anya Ayoung-Chee defeated 69 designers fair & square, tying Korto for second place behind Mondo-Gretchen tied at first place. It is not the record, but it is impressive, 87% more challengers beaten than Season 1 designer Jay McCarroll, and 27% more successes than Christian Siriano winner of Season 4. The show used to be a lot easier way back when, with fewer challengers, shorter seasons, longer times to make collections. Season 9 was the toughest season in Project Runway history. Anya deserves respect for getting into the top 4 highest scores in Project Runway history out of 137 designers who took a risk by going on the show. Had Anya been given proper credit for Episode #5 she would be the all-time champion of Project Runway with the highest ever number of fellow designers bested.
Anya's Stolen Win: Episode # 5
You can do all the math and counting yourself based on the examples from blog entry:
http://anya-fan.blogspot.com/2011/11/scoring-all-nine-seasons-of-project.html
... And using the visual graphics from blog entry:
http://anya-fan.blogspot.com/2011/11/compare-scorecards-for-all-nine-seasons.html
Here is the ultimate results for each of 9 seasons...
Season 1, Finalist Season Scores
Jay = 37 points
Kara Saun = 41 points
Wendy = 23 points
Season 2, Finalist Season Scores
Santino = 59
Chloe = 55
Daniel V = 51
Season 3, Finalist Season Scores
Jeffrey = 42
Uli = 56
Laura = 50
Michael = 51
Season 4, Finalist Season Scores
Christian = 55
Rami = 51
Jillian = 52
Season 5, Finalist Season Scores
Leanne = 55
Korto = 69
Kenley = 64
Jerell = 51
Season 6, Finalist Season Scores
Irina = 64
Althea = 67
Carol Hannah = 54
Season 7, Finalist Season Scores
Seth Aaron = 60
Emilio = 60
Mila = 63
Season 8, Finalist Season Scores
Gretchen = 70
Mondo = 70
Andy = 55
Season 9, Finalist Season Scores
Anya = 69
Josh M = 61
Viktor = 58
Kimberly = 44
Anthony Ryan = 61