The thing I'm seeing with a lot of the statements in here is a general disagreement over the intent/purpose of the award. Some view it as recognition, in the sense of "singleing out" these successful students for their accomplishments, others (and FIRST's stated intent) view it as being directly correlated to colleges recognizing these students during the admissions process. As someone who just went through the admissions process with DL Finalist on his resume, here's my two-cents(and a topic discussed extensively in
this thread):
For my college applications, I applied to four schools, and based off my academics(which put me in the top 10 class rank of a not-so-competitive HS) two of those four were schools that I was 100% certain I would get into, and the other two were two that I was pretty sure I would get in, but definitely wasn't a "shoe-in"(this is ignoring the fact that at most school's, you're chances of getting in are a lot higher with Early Action, something I did for every school). Now, I got into every school I applied to, but the only school that ever gave any correspondence in regards to being a DL finalist was WPI-and I'm pretty sure that was before I even applied.
Now, when being told the average SAT scores and overall average demographics in regards to the incoming class at the College of Engineering at my school(somewhere between 600-900 students I believe), my SAT scores were below average, by about 20 or 30 points(this was combined reading/math) and my GPA fit in fine(though I take every GPA rating with a grain of salt-many schools do it in strange ways, mine included). However, upon talking to various people, it seems that the amount of merit aid I got(ie. money not taking into account my financial need) was higher than others with similar GPAs and higher than others with higher SAT scores. So, in that sense, I don't know if it was DL(no one I spoke to about this was a fellow FIRST-er) or FIRST as a whole that helped me, but my essay did involve DL, so I'm inclined to say FIRST helped me in that sense.
Another thing I'd like to point out is another "line of interest" in last year's manual regarding DL:
Quote:
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Similar to the very prestigious National Merit Scholarship Award winners
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Now, I might just be viewing this out of context, as the paragraph goes on to describe the "hierarchy" of winning the award, but I do recall reading something where FIRST compared/stated that they hope for the award to become like NMS in that colleges recognize it as a very prestigious honor. I don't think it's any secret that college recognition is FIRST's overall intent/goal of this. They want colleges to recognize the value of FIRST programs, which in turn will lead to schools/students realizing the value of these programs