How do you deal with 60+ new members joining the team?

[MechEng83]

Firstly, it depends on the amount of veteran students you have. Our team has undergone a big expansion over the last 3 years, more than doubling in size (almost tripling) to near 80 students. Between attrition and graduations along with the increasing popularity of the team, we were over 50% rookie students for each of the last 3 years. If 60 students isn't more than 30% (which would mean you team is HUGE) then it's not as much of a problem.

It's difficult, for sure. The veteran students have to step up and start training the new students on how to use equipment, how to be safe in the shop, and just in general how build season and competitions go.

Things you can do to try to reduce the number of students who are there "just to hang out" is have a time requirement, grade requirement, selective application process, team fee, or something else that will only keep the interested students. I recommend using these things with caution, because someone has to manage the "who passes the bar" process and you can't always define the "best" FRC students through those means.