[Carol]

I am concerned about your statement on GP. Any team can have GP, no matter the size, no matter if they do nothing but build a robot. And any team can be spirited, helpful, and friendly at competitions no matter what the size.

But teams that you list, and many other similar ones, all had continuity through the years that built strong programs. That is, a group of adults - even one or two - who are willing and able to commit several years to the program. HS and college students (in general, there are exceptions) are too transient and are likely to move on within a few years.

The teams are more likely to meet all year long. Not as much as during build season but they don't take a break from April to January. Can you keep your team together during the summer and fall in order to be involved in community events and fundraising? Or after Atlanta does your team focus on school (AP tests and so forth), all go off to summer jobs and vacations, then doesn’t start thinking about FIRST again until later in the fall?

You also need a large enough team so that there are some people with time enough for other activities. If everyone is focused on the robot who is left for community events? My team is fortunate to have a subteam of non-engineers whose main focus is to organize fundraising, publicity, team logistics and community service. There is also a subteam of several students and one adult who spend most of their time developing the web site. Do you have someone who would focus on these matters and recruit others to participate? Someone who can disassociate from the build process and look at opportunities in these other areas?

You can have a good team without all this but it helps if you want to move up to the next level. If you want to work toward an award, a technical award is based only on the robot and you can certainly concentrate on that. Without an infrastructure in place for the larger non-technical awards you can always select one and aim for that one. Does your team have a business plan in place and sound financial goals? Or have you overcome financial obstacles by creative methods? Then you should aim for the Entrepreneurship Award (the full name starts with Kleiner but I can never remember the rest). Does your team have a distinctive image or theme that permeates throughout your whole program? (Shirts, robot, cart, mascot, etc.) Aim for the Imagery.

Scholarships you can all do individually. They are posted prominently on the FIRST website. Other scholarships you can find by yourself with a little digging – there are plenty of tools online for that. Being involved in FIRST is a big asset in getting these scholarships, particularly if you can get a mentor write a recommendation – and an asset in getting accepted by colleges. We’ve had a lot of students who said that FIRST was mentioned quite favorably by the admissions people at many of their college interviews

But again, none of this is necessary to get value from FIRST. If you want to learn skills, get inspired, be part of a great program, learn valuable life skills, you can do all this with a small team that just has good GP and builds the best robot they can.