University of Highschool

[lemiant]

In your opinion is it a better idea to host a team at a local university with advanced machine shops and lots of space that is a ways from the school which you are recruiting from, or at one of the highschools which you recruit from with basic machining?

[sanddrag]

It depends on the parent involvement. If you have parents committed to it and willing to drive the students wherever whenever, do it at the university. If the parents dump their kids on you, keep it at the high school.

[Tristan Lall]

Is that like the University of Phoenix?

(I'm going to assume you really meant "or"....)

[goldenglove002]

Depends on what the situation is. Are you a high school team or are you a group encompassing multiple schools?

IMO, if you are one high school it's better to stay at the school. Yes you will have an easier time building your robots with advanced tooling, but you are not going to reach as many students. When it's at the school it's often much easier for some of the kids to be on the team.

For example, our team used to work completely out of our mentor's office. While it worked for some people, many were unable to be involved with the robot because they lacked the ability to get somewhere 25 minutes away. When we moved a lot of our build to a room in the school (albeit with significantly less machining abilities), more people began to show up and more hands were in the robot. Not to mention the large amount of curious onlookers who never knew we had a robotics team before but now support it like many of the school's other programs.

[lemiant]

Originally Posted by sanddrag

It depends on the parent involvement. If you have parents committed to it and willing to drive the students wherever whenever, do it at the university. If the parents dump their kids on you, keep it at the high school.

We likely wouldn't have the parents to do it, we would catch public transit to the university.

[Tristan Lall]

Originally Posted by lemiant

We likely wouldn't have the parents to do it, we would catch public transit to the university.

Can you take the university for a test drive? Figure out a little off-season project, and arrange to use their facilities. Then you'll get to see how they operate, and if there are any practical issues to you spending an entire build season there. Better to find out whether it's a workable arrangement now, than later.