[SarahB]

Once again, you haven’t seen the application so you really can’t judge if its impersonal or not. You assume that its just basic questions like name, grade, and whatnot. It very well could include much more personal essay type questions about why they want to join the team and what interests them about robotics/engineering. These kinds of questions would not only help narrow down the field to a manageable number, but also help them to get to know their applicants better. You may think its not necessary to weed people out at the beginning based on your own experience, but this team’s situation is different so you really can’t judge. It seems to me like they are dealing with a fairly large applicant pool but very limited resources. They can’t conceivably go through training and practice and planning with such a group, especially when they expect that most of them will drop out or will do nothing and only stay on to get the free trip.

I’m not saying an application process is a great thing and every team should do it, I just don’t think you should attack them for their decision to use one when you know nothing about their team’s situation.