[Seth Mallory]

Our team has been dealing with this for the more then 10 years. Our application does not use the students grades. This year included the students activities, courses, and hobbies. Why they want to be on the team. And the last was an essay on how to get around a angry moose without hurting it in Alaska with a pack of 20 seemly random objects. The purpose was to see what imagination, problem solving, and did they rember their friend and use them. The pack had the score Handel's Messiah. We had many descriptions on how to use for building material something to distract the moose to singing from it to sooth the angry moose. The use of playing cards included throwing the cards and instructions to solitaire to so the moose would play and be distracted. Imagination counts as much as logic.

We had a third party copy the application with names, age, grade, and sex removed. They were listed by number at this time. Then the mentors read and graded them. Some students would list so many after school activities that we felt they would not have the time. We look for students that are willing to spend the time that it takes and not just have being on the team for college applications. At this time we discussed our views and came up with a group grade. Then we added grade and sex into the mix. We made our picks without the names of the students. This process is the worst part of being a mentor of a popular team and I hate it. Without it we would grow from 54 to 150+ in 2 years and that is above us. It took us years to scale the program up 54 and keep the quality and I miss having 35 students on the team. Our original mentor started this system and it works for us. Other teams have fine ways that work for them.