[Matt Adams]

I'm not sure that this poll is asking right question to ask if you want to think about the bigger picture.

I think it requires basically 4 questions:

1. What percentage of freshman students at your high school plan on pursuing a degree in technology or engineering?

2. What percentage of graduating seniors at your high school plan on pursuing a degree in technology or engineering?

3. What percentage of freshman students at your high school's FIRST team plan on pursuing a degree in technology or engineering?

4. What percentage of graduating seniors students at your high school's FIRST team plan on pursuing a degree in technology or engineering?

Now I'm not going to pretend to assume that this sort of metric is the only valuable thing that comes out of student participation in FIRST. I'd be willing to say that regardless of your desire to pursue a hi-tech degree, if you participated on a FIRST team with good mentors and put something into it, you're probably better off then you would be otherwise.

Ideally, according to FIRST's goals, you'd like to see a change of career choices after participation and hopefully a higher percentage than your high school overall. If you're only recruiting a bunch of students that are already pretty certain they're set to a technology or engineering degree, you probably want to boost your efforts to reach out to those who aren't sure about their future or think that engineering isn't accessible to them.

Just some thoughts.

Matt