[EricH]

Spirit is one thing. But if there is no robot to cheer for, it's like sending out the cheerleaders and only the cheerleaders at the football game. Guess how many teams would win if they did that? Right. It might be interesting to announce that if the robot wasn't fully functional when it entered the crate (or bag), only a skeleton team, made up of primarily the team members who actually contributed to the build, will go to competition.

And yes, do the application process. Take a leaf out of 234's notebook: The team is disbanded at the end of the competition season, and everyone has to reapply to be on the team the next year (mentors evaluate the applications). For you guys, it might be the lead students who do the evaluation.

Two things that you should have on the application:
1) "Why are you doing this?" Stuff like "it looks good on my college application" shouldn't be an automatic disqualifier, but should merit further evaluation of the student in question.
2) "What are you interested in?" Again, stuff like "Spirit" shouldn't be an automatic disqualifier, but if you have 50 people interested only in spirit, make sure that some of them don't end up on the team.