Originally Posted by Ed Law (Post 1597067)

I don't quite understand your point and your example. From listening to dozens of talks from admission officers, I gathered that colleges are interested in 6 main areas:
1) GPA
2) Standardized test scores
3) Essays and supplemental questions if any
4) Extra-curricular activities and Leadership
5) Work experience and Entrepreneurship
6) Recommendation letters
They are not in any particular order. Every college will put different things as higher priority. A student has more control over some of these than others but I would argue that there is nothing on that list that the student has no control at all. These are things that admission officers use to see whether the student will be a good fit for the college. What students want to do with their life has nothing to do with these 6 things. Are you suggesting that students should do whatever they want and not care about what colleges are looking for? And none of the 6 areas are things that could help in their future whatever they decided to pursue?

Originally Posted by Fusion_Clint (Post 1597057)

Do not encourage your student to base life decisions on what colleges may want.

Originally Posted by Ed Law (Post 1597067)

I don't quite understand your point and your example. From listening to dozens of talks from admission officers, I gathered that colleges are interested in 6 main areas:
1) GPA
2) Standardized test scores
3) Essays and supplemental questions if any
4) Extra-curricular activities and Leadership
5) Work experience and Entrepreneurship
6) Recommendation letters
They are not in any particular order. Every college will put different things as higher priority. A student has more control over some of these than others but I would argue that there is nothing on that list that the student has no control at all. These are things that admission officers use to see whether the student will be a good fit for the college. What students want to do with their life has nothing to do with these 6 things. Are you suggesting that students should do whatever they want and not care about what colleges are looking for? And none of the 6 areas are things that could help in their future whatever they decided to pursue? To avoid further misunderstanding, I don't advocate that students join a club or activity just to look good on their resume to help them get into a certain field. If they have no interest in that field, then they should not be joining that activity. If you don't have passion in what you do, it will show on the application. Joining many activities do not make you look good. It actually makes you look bad. On the other hand, I do encourage younger students to try as many things as they have time for, then narrow down to the things that they enjoy the most.
I am not looking for an argument with you. I am not trying to convince you that I am right. You work with your students the way you want to.
Back to the OP, since your friend is looking into going to a community college, what I said to you before is not as important. It is really his choice. Sometimes in life, you have to do what makes yourself happy but there are people around you that you have to consider also. It is not always about you.

Originally Posted by FiMFanatic (Post 1597104)

To those 6, I would add "Class Rank", as GPA (in a vacuum) can be very deceptive when comparing school to school.

Good post.

Originally Posted by GaryVoshol (Post 1597071)

You have options. As others mentioned, perhaps you could change some team meeting times. My thought is that you should recruit new team members, or encourage other existing team members to come more often, so that you will get more than 2.7 people at a meeting.

Originally Posted by ASD20 (Post 1597107)

Class rank is also meaningless. Most schools just look at your raw transcript and calculate gpa using their own formula. Plus, it's all the same thing to the student.

Originally Posted by Sperkowsky (Post 1597027)

Don't convince him. Let him do what he wants. Tell him to do what he likes more. You don't want him regretting his path later.

Originally Posted by Fusion_Clint (Post 1597122)

Casting aspersions on the basketball team as unsuccessful "The basketball team isn't going anywhere(last year the record was 5-15)", isn't an entirely honest argument from a struggling FRC team that finished 60th at your only event this year.

Originally Posted by team-4480 (Post 1597134)

Shots fired lol.

We got the short end of the stick because of who we were matched up against and with. Our robot functioned nicely every single match, even hitting a high goal in auto. Just some stats from that regional....

Scored 11.25 Auto points per match(7th in Auto OPR)

Scored average of 53.3875% of our alliance's points

Anyways, basketball is much different than robotics. Basketball requires a certain amount of natural talent(i.e. height, arm length, speed) in order to be successful and those variables typically don't change much. Robotics relies on ideas and execution of those ideas which changes a lot each year. One year you may have the best idea and the next the worst idea for your robot. My point is, just because we were matched with not the great teams does not mean that next year we will be getting 60th again.

Originally Posted by Fusion_Clint (Post 1597150)

I have been assuming that I am talking to the School Sponsor aka teacher/mentor. What is your role on the team?

Looking back on the original posts, I realise that you are a student. You need a passionate dedicated school teacher/coach for your club. Do you have one? If not, find one. Is this part of a class or entirely after school.
.

Originally Posted by team-4480 (Post 1597165)

Yes, we do have a very passionate coach for our club but he balances being a good father/husband with being at robotics which is a hard thing to do.