Does robotics attract the right students?

[Carol]

Originally Posted by davidthefat

I can confidently say majority of the students who are on robotics already had the vision to become engineers and scientists, or at least were entertaining the thought of it.

The key part of your sentence is "at least were entertaining the thought of it". If being on a FIRST team can help those students decide, then it is worth it. Some may have thought about being an engineer (to use one example of a STEM career - they are others) but after time with FIRST realized that either they totally love engineering or that they really don't want to go into that field. Isn't it better that they find that out before college?

Also, students interested in nonSTEM careers can benefit as well, and not just from learning the basic skills of team dynamics, time scheduling, leadership, public speaking, etc., that can be learned from being on the team. We have had students on our team who have focused on web design, graphics, videography, and have gone to college to study these areas.

As for the problem of too many students on the team, well that is a separate problem. I bet this has already been discussed in other threads.