FRC Blogged - Something New – FIRST Dean’s List Changes

[MechEng83]

Originally Posted by Pault

I don't have any data my back this up, but I feel like your claim that teams don't agree with FIRST on who to nominate is a blanket statement. I know atleast one team that values giving the award to Juniors: my own. Maybe my team is just the exception rather than the norm, but I seriously hope we aren't the only one.

Yes, it was a blanket statement. The generalization is based off reading previous comments in this thread. I fully acknowledge that I don't speak for every team, but circumstantially, I'd argue the majority represented in this thread hold a similar viewpoint.

Also: "It's prestige for the deserving student, vs. prestige for the universities who recruit Dean's List winners" is an extreme generalization. The real situation is "Prestige for the most deserving student vs. prestige and tangible benefits to the very deserving student." Prestige to a university is just a side effect.

I did not mean to imply the junior (or sophomore) would not be somewhat deserving, nor that they would not attain prestige, but rather that they may not be the most deserving. We nominated a very deserving junior last year, so I'm not arguing that juniors shouldn't be nominated, or only seniors should.

I'm not saying I agree that teams should be forced to nominate Sophmores and Juniors. I'm saying that nominating Sophmores and Juniors is something that teams should really consider practicing even if they weren't forced to.

And herein lies the source of consternation: we're being forced to ignore seniors who may potentially be the most deserving student.

[saikiranra]

Originally Posted by Jon Stratis

Aren't Sophomores/Juniors inherently at a disadvantage when put up against a senior? By the simple virtue of being around longer, seniors have done more, and very likely have more leadership on their team (In our team, all captains have been seniors for 7 years, until this year with our first Junior as a captain).

So, even if Juniors are preferred, judges likely look at the students and think "Hmmm... A senior who is the captain of the team and did all this stuff for the past three years, or a Junior with 2 past years and less team leadership?"

That is true, but I have seen sophomores and juniors who have taken on high roles of leadership. On my team, we have had plenty of Vice Presidents who were Sophomores (even currently!) and presidents who were Juniors, who also were drivers, designed key components, and so on and so forth.

In addition, FIRST is springing this on us so suddenly.

This is something a lot of current seniors have been working for. We have all toiled away countless hours working with FRC and mentoring FLL teams, partly so we can get some recognition and hope to win this prestigious award. Because of this new decision, I bet that a lot of seniors (me included) are disappointed that they did not even have a chance. (In the past, the seniors have usually been the ones recommended) If this is something FIRST is really bent upon, they need to let us know at least a season in advance.

[Mr. Mike]

I am really torn about this one. As a team mentor this takes away our ability to reward a hard working senior student.
BUT
I will always be grateful to FIRST for as a junior my daughter was chosen. It opened so many doors that she is now at one of the top engineering schools in the country. For us as a family it was worth about 100K in scholarships and the benefits for her will not stop there.
Unfortunately senior just do not get the full benefits of the award.
I’m still torn

[Steven Donow]

The thing I'm seeing with a lot of the statements in here is a general disagreement over the intent/purpose of the award. Some view it as recognition, in the sense of "singleing out" these successful students for their accomplishments, others (and FIRST's stated intent) view it as being directly correlated to colleges recognizing these students during the admissions process. As someone who just went through the admissions process with DL Finalist on his resume, here's my two-cents(and a topic discussed extensively in this thread):

For my college applications, I applied to four schools, and based off my academics(which put me in the top 10 class rank of a not-so-competitive HS) two of those four were schools that I was 100% certain I would get into, and the other two were two that I was pretty sure I would get in, but definitely wasn't a "shoe-in"(this is ignoring the fact that at most school's, you're chances of getting in are a lot higher with Early Action, something I did for every school). Now, I got into every school I applied to, but the only school that ever gave any correspondence in regards to being a DL finalist was WPI-and I'm pretty sure that was before I even applied.

Now, when being told the average SAT scores and overall average demographics in regards to the incoming class at the College of Engineering at my school(somewhere between 600-900 students I believe), my SAT scores were below average, by about 20 or 30 points(this was combined reading/math) and my GPA fit in fine(though I take every GPA rating with a grain of salt-many schools do it in strange ways, mine included). However, upon talking to various people, it seems that the amount of merit aid I got(ie. money not taking into account my financial need) was higher than others with similar GPAs and higher than others with higher SAT scores. So, in that sense, I don't know if it was DL(no one I spoke to about this was a fellow FIRST-er) or FIRST as a whole that helped me, but my essay did involve DL, so I'm inclined to say FIRST helped me in that sense.

Another thing I'd like to point out is another "line of interest" in last year's manual regarding DL:

Similar to the very prestigious National Merit Scholarship Award winners

Now, I might just be viewing this out of context, as the paragraph goes on to describe the "hierarchy" of winning the award, but I do recall reading something where FIRST compared/stated that they hope for the award to become like NMS in that colleges recognize it as a very prestigious honor. I don't think it's any secret that college recognition is FIRST's overall intent/goal of this. They want colleges to recognize the value of FIRST programs, which in turn will lead to schools/students realizing the value of these programs

If FIRST doesn't want to choose between College Recognition and Accomplished Student Recognition, why not make two different awards? Make the Dean's List into what they have as of today - an award intended to aid exemplary students in their college efforts, and make another award (for the purpose of this post, I will call it the Student Role-Model Award) that recognizes great achievement and accomplishment in FIRST.

The Dean's List award could be focused on Sophomore and Junior students working on the college process, and the Student Role-Model award would be achievable by students of all grade levels, from the super enthusiastic and driven freshman, to the accomplished and well-known seniors, and everyone in between.

[vhcook]

I think the interview component is probably going to make it easier to choose the right winners. On the other hand, we were in the habit of not telling our nominee(s) until after the event (much as our students don't tell the Woodie Flowers nominee until after the nominated event), so we're going to have to make some adjustments there.

On the grade thing, I can see why they're doing it, but I wish they were adding the interview this year and phasing in the new class limits next year so that candidates that might have gotten overlooked last year as Juniors might get another shot, and to make sure that teams that had nominated all Seniors had a chance to not skip a class. I don't see Sophomores as likely to be terribly competitive except in rare cases, though, since the award criteria are looking for a track record of leadership.

I really don't like that this is going to effectively disqualify D'Penguineers, and it seems like it would be in the spirit of this award being useful in college applications to have alternate eligibility rules for international teams in differently structured educational systems.

[Steven Donow]

Originally Posted by Andrew Lawrence

If FIRST doesn't want to choose between College Recognition and Accomplished Student Recognition, why not make two different awards? Make the Dean's List into what they have as of today - an award intended to aid exemplary students in their college efforts, and make another award (for the purpose of this post, I will call it the Student Role-Model Award) that recognizes great achievement and accomplishment in FIRST.

The Dean's List award could be focused on Sophomore and Junior students working on the college process, and the Student Role-Model award would be achievable by students of all grade levels, from the super enthusiastic and driven freshman, to the accomplished and well-known seniors, and everyone in between.

Because(and especially with the interview component) that just becomes too much. Also it makes them basically the same thing. It would be a confusion for "casuals" in that to "random person discovering a FIRST competition" they see two awards with arbitrary differences and could easily think, "oh so which one's better?" The complexity this would add is unnecessary (much in the sense that at some competitions, the major robot awards could, in theory, be interchangeable).

I view the "major awards" of FIRST(ie. those that recognize the ideals of FIRST) in this way:
Chairman's-Teams
Woodie Flowers-Mentors
DL-Students.

They can't give a separate award that would be defined as JUST for college recognition. That's what scholarships are for.

[cadandcookies]

Steven, I think the point is more that FIRST has two definitions of what the purpose of Dean's List is-- it's to recognize students that exemplify FIRST's ideals, but it's also to help deserving FIRST students get a leg up in college admissions and financial aid.

The problem that I think is causing the most problems is the specific edge case of this transition year-- that there are some seniors that due to team tradition or other circumstances were not applied for last year, who now can never have the opportunity to be a Dean's List finalist or winner. Sure there's some problems with just the principle of limiting Dean's List to just sophomores and juniors, but it would have been much easier to stomach if some of this year's seniors weren't left out in the cold. The transition could have been smoother, but I think ultimately the change will end up for the better.

[Bryan Herbst]

Originally Posted by Jon Jack

Effectively, the Dean's List isn't going to do much for them except give them recognition.

Originally Posted by Jon Stratis

By recognizing Sophomores and Juniors, we give them another year or two to use that recognition and title to help affect FIRST in their community before they go off to college.

So, as a community lets change how we treat the Dean's List. Lets look at it not as a recognition award that we forget the next year. Lets look at the students who win it as the ones we'll turn to to help enhance the entire FIRST community over the next year!

I'm conflicted on the Junior/Sophomore change. I totally am on board in terms of helping the students get into colleges, but I have personally have trouble nominating a student I have only seen in their first two years of high school, during which students typically haven't reached the level of maturity I like to see in Dean's List Winners. Naturally, there are plenty of exceptions.

The quotes I selected above are representative of my primary complaint- FIRST very heavily emphasizes inspiration and recognition. To me, this change eliminates the chance to recognize both one generation of students (short term) and students who don't truly begin to shine until they are seniors for any of a number of reasons.

I also would hope that many of the same characteristics that define our Dean's List winners would show on their college applications as well, whether or not the students have the title to reinforce their claims. I know it doesn't always work that way, but that's my ideal world.

As a senior Dean's List finalist in 2010, I know first-hand that the award comes too late for some colleges. Others you can slip in it just before the deadline. I do not feel like I got burned. I am incredibly proud to be a Dean's List finalist, and am appreciative of the recognition, even though it did not help me get into any colleges.

[Michael Hill]

I don't like this at all. Just because a student won't have the opportunity to put it on a college application, don't disallow them from winning. Is that all Dean's list means to FIRST? Something that you can put on an application? Jeesh.

Also, I disagree with interviewing. It really doesn't let students on drive teams even be eligible. Just like how we don't have drive team members on Chairman's award teams. Drive team members are most often the leaders of the teams...the ones deserving the Dean's list award. They don't have time to leave for an interview.

[Steven Donow]

Originally Posted by Michael Hill

Also, I disagree with interviewing. It really doesn't let students on drive teams even be eligible. Just like how we don't have drive team members on Chairman's award teams. Drive team members are most often the leaders of the teams...the ones deserving the Dean's list award. They don't have time to leave for an interview.

This is definitely not the case on some teams. On smaller teams, yes, often the drive team are the team leaders, but on large teams they aren't always the leaders. Also, the blog states that interviews go less than 5 minutes. As someone who was on drive team for 3 years, I definitely can say that at every competition I've been to I would have had 5 minutes to spare, especially for something like this...

[buildmaster5000]

I'm going to toss my two cents in here...bare in mind that I graduated HS in 2011, before the Dean's list was even an award (I'm pretty sure anyways):

Interviews: good idea. The community has hit the dead horse enough on this. An interview does a much better job of allowing the judges to see the true qualities of a person. It is easy enough for someone to seem enthusiastic on paper but be apathetic when it comes to the interview. This situation is now mitigated. Good job here.

Now, the limitation to 'not-seniors' is interesting. To me, the biggest satisfaction I got from FRC was seeing 2 students take a team that had basically disbanded, and rebuild a bigger, stronger, deeper team with more school support than I could have ever imagined. Do I think that I influenced them? I like to think so. Additionally, the award 2421 in 2010 at DC (Engineering Excellence) is a huge climax in my FRC memory. I smile whenever I walk into my room and see that trophy sitting on the shelf.
Is it right to recognize the students that contribute greatly to the FRC community? ABSOLUTELY.
However, I feel that this whole award is missing the point: often times, the greatest students are not the ones that do the most work or recruit the most students or fund raise the most, but the student who, singlehandedly, motivates and drives the entire team. The award, in my opinion, does not tend to recognize this student, even though they are, IMO the critical link in the team. If a student were to really take charge, take ownership, and drive the rest of team to do the same, then I would want to recognize them on the team level first, making sure that people knew what this student did to make the TEAM successful......

Now, back to my thermo assignment..

[ghostmachine360]

Originally Posted by buildmaster5000

I'm going to toss my two cents in here...bare in mind that I graduated HS in 2011, before the Dean's list was even an award (I'm pretty sure anyways)

The Dean's List was started during the 2010 FRC season.

[Mr. Mike]

Does anyone have the stats for the DL?
Looking for the year, number of finalist, finalist grades, winners, and winner’s grade.

[ghostmachine360]

Originally Posted by Mr. Mike

Does anyone have the stats for the DL?
Looking for the year, number of finalist, finalist grades, winners, and winner’s grade.

PM me; we've been collecting stats on finalists and winners.