Success rate of college-founded teams?
 

Just out of curiosity (aka, this is what happens when Jess' mind wanders at work)......do we have stats on what the success rate (retention, average life span, etc) of college student-founded teams is? I'm looking for numbers, not stories.

Thanks, guys. I'm sure someone has some type of data on this out there :)

Re: Success rate of college-founded teams?
 

I'm continually suprised by how few university teams there are out there... :(

Re: Success rate of college-founded teams?
 

Then you've obviously never been a part of one.

Re: Success rate of college-founded teams?
 

Woah. Okay, talking about the why of college teams was not the point of this thread.

Again, I'm just looking for stats, people. Even a "our team was founded by a college student and our team is ___ years old" or "I knew a guy who started a team at ___ and they lasted for ___ years" are good enough stats for me. I'm not looking for the story behind it, this is more of an imformal survey.

Re: Success rate of college-founded teams?
 

well i don't know about college rentention, but I found that in florida the overall retention rate is much worse than what it seemed....I would check with FIRST about those #s because when I research Florida retention (not including 2004) we have created 51 teams and kept only 28.....not very good, and the net gain of teams over the next several years in trending downward (i anticipate florida loses approximately 3 more of the 2004 rookies before the start of next season.....)

but neways sry i couldn't be of more help other than to highlight the retention rate problem I see, and would assume something similar is happening elsewhere....I would contact FIRST about it

Re: Success rate of college-founded teams?
 

461 was started for the 2000 season at Purdue and is still going as strong as ever after five years. I would say we have been fairly successful.

Re: Success rate of college-founded teams?
 

The Clarkson team's (team 229) rookie season was 1999. The team was started by a freshman and has now grown into a successful and well respected team.

-Kristin (former team 229 member)

Re: Success rate of college-founded teams?
 

The Northeastern University team was started in 1998 by a NU student and bolstered with support when Textron Systems joined prior to the kickoff date. We'll be back next year and for many more from what I can see.

Re: Success rate of college-founded teams?
 

Georgia Tech directly started 3 teams.

Team 608 - Started/First competed in the 2001 game (No longer exists)
Team 832 - Started/First competed in the 2002 game (Now no longer directly mentored by GATech but still participating)
Team 1002 - Started/First competed in the 2003 game (Currently funded and mentored by the GTFIRST team at Georgia Tech. See my sig. for recent accomplishments :D...and yes I'm proud of them)

Re: Success rate of college-founded teams?
 

The University of Washington helped start team 360. We broke away after 2 years. They are now mentoring another team.

The major issue was that the grad students did everything and they did not want any help from the HS students.

Re: Success rate of college-founded teams?
 

Team 70, Auto City Bandits out of Flint, was started by GMI (Now Kettering University) in 1998. In 2003, however, Kettering was forced to cut all funding to Team 70. I'm sorry to say that their future is unclear, unfortunately, unless they can get another large college or company to sponsor them or Kettering regenerates funding. :(

Edit: Disclaimer: The future of the team thing is hearsay from sources involved with the team. I'm not on the team, nor do I know what their situation is there.

Edit: How rare is it to see 3 "u" words consecutively in a sentence?

Re: Success rate of college-founded teams?
 

<off topic>
Yes, I know this isn't a thread on funding... But why doesn't the team go after smaller companies... my team did that and it was easier than finding one major corp. sponsor.
</>

Re: Success rate of college-founded teams?
 

Team 128 was started by the Grandview Heights High School and The Ohio State University in 1996. It is still going strong, but is no longer affiliated with OSU.
Team 677 was started by the Columbus School for Girls and Ohio State in 2000.
Team 1014 was started by Dublin City Schools and Ohio State in 2002.
Team 1317 was started by a community of homeschooled students and Ohio State in 2003.
Ohio State currently mentors teams 677, 1014 and 1317.

Re: Success rate of college-founded teams?
 

What does being PART of a team have to do with my suprise when confronted with a perceived deficiency in college sponsored teams? I'm not saying these teams aren't successful, I'm just saying that it's unusual that there aren't more university sponsored teams. You'd think any non-rookie team would have a person at university to garner support for them. I'm not implying that the universties aren't doing there part, simply that it seems the university-FIRST link leaves something to be desired. Always improving, that's the real goal.

Re: Success rate of college-founded teams?
 

The difficulty is your perception. Since you haven't yet been a part of a university sponsored team, you don't understand how difficult it can be to juggle class assignments, FIRST responsibilities, life, and work with a university administration.

It's not fun and it's a good part of why there aren't many university sponsored teams.