Team applications: Yes, or no?

[DampRobot]

To answer your question in one word: "No"

I do see the benefits to having some type of application. Some believe that it makes kids more committed, or makes huge numbers of potential students more manageable. Knowing what little I do about your team, I don't think you are overwhelmed by potential students. The numbers of committed students seems to be more of what you are trying to address.

Commitment is a hard thing to pin down, and even harder to obtain in it's pure form. Some coaches, teachers, and even FIRST members I know believe that commitment comes from attending a certain number of days, raising a certain number of dollars, or doing some other unpopular thing to "pay your dues." Efforts to "enforce" commitment have been unsuccessful at best and disastrous to the organisation at worst. If these applications are an attempt to establish some system that creates commitment, I would suggest trying to find some other method.

In my personal experience, the application can both turn down qualified applicants with other interests and activities, and attract students that like the prestige of being in an exclusive club. GRT, for example (who has an application process, as well as only letting sophomores through seniors join the team), has turned down students including some friends of mine that I believe would really thrive in FRC. However, they do really seem to have a problem of [i]too much[i] interest, which the application process seems to have solved.

Applications seem to be created to curtail participation (which doesn't seem to be your problem), or to improve the quality or "commitment" of those that do attend. In my opinion, applications are effective at dealing with the second concern, but fail at creating commitment (like all other systematic approaches).

I welcome other opinions, and hope that my own has helped.

[Gray Adams]

Originally Posted by DampRobot

To answer your question in one word: "No"

I do see the benefits to having some type of application. Some believe that it makes kids more committed, or makes huge numbers of potential students more manageable. Knowing what little I do about your team, I don't think you are overwhelmed by potential students. The numbers of committed students seems to be more of what you are trying to address.

Commitment is a hard thing to pin down, and even harder to obtain in it's pure form. Some coaches, teachers, and even FIRST members I know believe that commitment comes from attending a certain number of days, raising a certain number of dollars, or doing some other unpopular thing to "pay your dues." Efforts to "enforce" commitment have been unsuccessful at best and disastrous to the organisation at worst. If these applications are an attempt to establish some system that creates commitment, I would suggest trying to find some other method.

In my personal experience, the application can both turn down qualified applicants with other interests and activities, and attract students that like the prestige of being in an exclusive club. GRT, for example (who has an application process, as well as only letting sophomores through seniors join the team), has turned down students including some friends of mine that I believe would really thrive in FRC. However, they do really seem to have a problem of [i]too much[i] interest, which the application process seems to have solved.

Applications seem to be created to curtail participation (which doesn't seem to be your problem), or to improve the quality or "commitment" of those that do attend. In my opinion, applications are effective at dealing with the second concern, but fail at creating commitment (like all other systematic approaches).

I welcome other opinions, and hope that my own has helped.

We've been doing a lot of thinking recently about our team structure, and how incredibly difficult it has been for us to select students who are successful on our team. Because of the fact that all students on the team must be enrolled in a certain engineering class, we can't have a team beyond a certain size. Every year, despite having applications and recommendations from current team members, it seems like a gamble. Some of the best students have the worst applications, and vice versa.

Applications seem like the only way short of completely random picking to narrow down 100+ applicants to 55 or so spots.

[Alexa Stott]

To further add to my previous post: our mentors do conduct interview of team members at some point during the year. This is to help find out their expectations, let them know what the team expects from them, what their interests are, etc. so we can fill them into a role. It also lets the coaches know who is the most serious about it, who is there to sort of hang out, and what they can expect from each student. These sorts of things, as well as the actions of students during the build season, all factor into determining our travel roster. All students, so long as the meet the requirements for being on the team, attend our home regional (or district events/championship as the case is now). Our team tries to offset the cost of travel so each student typically pays $300-$400 to go to, say, the Orlando or Las Vegas Regional (Hawaii was much higher, for obvious reasons). Thus, students who are truly committed to the team and put in the most time are rewarded by being able to go on a trip with the team. I don't think we've ever had an issue keeping this number reasonable and it keeps us from preventing students from being on the team if they want to be.

[JohnBoucher]

Yes to applications.

We detail specific obligations that the students will have on the team(grades, GP, community service) and use it as their understanding and acceptance of the teams rules and conditions. It is the last page of our handbook and a parent must also sign indicating that they understand what the team expects from the student.

Yes, we have had to use the signed application to remind students what they agreed to do.

[neshera]

It sounds like there may be two categories of teams here:
1) Need every possible available body, don't need to refuse anyone's participation
2) More students want to be on the team than the team can handle appropriately

For #1, recommend: No application, just an info sheet.
Keep track of time spent on the team; obviously this includes time at the shop, but should also include communitiy service hours, time at demos, time spent building the webpage, time spent contacting potential sponsors, etc.

On our team, we pay for the students' hotel room, some meals at Regionals if they have put in the required hours. If they fall a little short, they have to pay their own way. If they fall a lot short, they are not given an excuse to miss school to travel to/attend the Regional. You don't have to set the bar too high, but enough to "weed out" the student who just wants the occaisional Friday off school.

For #2, we really have little experience in this realm, so I ignorantly recommend: HELP START ANOTHER TEAM