What is Your Team's Application Process?

[Lij2015]

Our team this year had a problem that its never had before, too many people on it.
Our build space is a small shop that can probably only fit 15 or so people working (Which isn't really a problem as our mechanical team wasn't bigger than that this year) in it at a time and we only have two smaller sized classrooms for the other type work. So we are debating some sort of application or evaluation process for new members and cutting old ones (this isn't my question, I know exactly who I'd cut)

This year we almost grazed 40 students and probably about 10-12 of those students were super apathetic and didn't care to actually do anything. Since we have a pretty open policy on who can be there it kind of just happened and this caused some administrative nightmares.

What selection or evaluation process does your team have for selecting the students on it? Also if any of those processes involve an application I'd love to see a few examples!

[asid61]

We let everyone in. Generally we have around 130+ applicants, and we split them up for trainings. By build season we usually end up with around ~80 people left, and by the end of build no more than ~40 are on the team. Those are just guesstimates, but we do lose a lot of people.
Generally if you hold basic training in how to use tools in the preseason, people will leave if they're not interested. For us, rookie retention is the issue as the trainings are of poor quality.

[BlueLipstick]

Besides our initial recruitment meeting where the commitment of time and energy is stressed, we interview all our applicants and require written paragraphs to accompany these interviews. Usually the writing deters anyone who's not in it for the long haul, but we do see some students drop out as build season approaches. Throughout the season, grade checks keep unmotivated students from competing. Volunteer work is another integral part of our traveling expectations, so students who are generally not willing to put in the work will not come to competitions. A lot of times students who don't attend competitions never get fully invested in the program, and leave. The key is giving the students opportunities to earn their keep without forcing them.

In the end, you get out of FIRST what you put in.

[The other Gabe]

we let everyone in, and have preseason trainings that help us weed out those who don't really want to do it... build season does that too, though . while anyone can join, only those who give full commitment (determined either by hours, workload, or by our executive board when our hours tracking system failed) get financial assistance making it to competitions.

this year we had approx. 30 students, a disturbingly large amount of whom were seniors (we may need to start doing a bit more outreach... although my class (seniors) did always have a large amount of people in the club).

[jijiglobe]

The way we do it is we try to make sure everyone in the lab at any time is doing work. If there's always work to do then the people who are just there because they don't feel like going home will either do work or go somewhere else.

[sergioCorral842]

"Do you want to join?"
"Yes"
"Ok"

Same application goes for getting programmers.

In all seriousness, we let anyone join. However, we only take a limited amount of people to competitions (typically 20 or so) and that is determined through how much work people have done and how much they contribute to our team journal.

[cad321]

Back in 2013, Ontario faced bill 115 causing many teams to not be able to compete that year. Our team was fortunate enough that year to become considered an official course within our school allowing us to compete. We had similar issues with to many students the year before that (about 80 students total, not including mentors) and this allowed us to get an idea for who is going to actually be committed.

We made students write an essay as to why they feel they would benefit the team and also held an after school course that new members were required to attend. This course also went on their transcript meaning if they only sat around all day doing nothing, they would have a poor grade. This process made it quite clear who was ready to commit to the team and who wasn't.

After 2013 we have relaxed about the entry essay and who needs to take the after school course (dependent on what daytime courses you take/ your experience). However the after school course is really great IMO, because it shows students that this will take effort on their behalf. If they feel it's to much for them, they can stop before the actual build comes and helps keep our team at a manageable level.

All that being said, we still follow the model that anyone can join if they want to and try to ensure that we make our team as inclusive as we can.

[Louis_]

>First meeting lots of people
>Build season starts: "Wow you're still here?"
>They're on the team.

[AJCaliciuri]

Since Team 1305 is a community team, not a school team, we have continuous intake. Members will join through the summer all the way until the day before Championships.

We don't, however, have an application or screening process. We're in a smaller city, so we're not in a position to refuse students who'd like to join.

We do, however, do our best to find the area of the team that the students find the most intertesting and would like to contribute to, whether that be the Business team, Build Team, Stratgey Team etc.

If students come to meetings and do nothing or cause trouble, we always try to get them one on one with a mentor to work with them and enegage them. We've very rarely ever had to ask a student to leave the team.

[Lij2015]

This is all good info, and i wish our team could simply have uncaring people drop on their own!

With next year on the horizon, and what happened with our numbers joining this year after having a really good 2014 season we anticipate the numbers will grow even larger next year as we had an even better season this year.
With only 6-8 mentors to go around at a time we may simply hit a point in which deferring people is not to weed out but simply because of space limitations (as our team really can only hold 32 people)

[TogetherSword8]

We have a similar problem to the OP, we are limited to a shop space of only about 35-40 people, and that is including a room with no tools in it at all. As well as only having 3 mentors!
Solving the mentor problem is easier with the senior students, but the space problem has always been a deterrent to quite a few students. What we have found is by some small rotation, we can expand this number, but it does sound counterintuitive. We encourage our members to not only be a part of robotics, but to be involved with other groups in the school. I am involved in band and am the president of our It's Academic club, so I am often not arriving until 3 or 3:30 when we start at 2:15 daily. People involved in sports arrive after their practices, and by then other have left for work, or to go home to complete their homework. This rotation scheme is not formal, but it does allow us to increase our size beyond our shop's limits.

[Tungrus]

Originally Posted by Lij2015

This is all good info, and i wish our team could simply have uncaring people drop on their own!

Murphy's law...this ^^^ will never happen! They will stick with the team and their parents (in many cases) stop by competitions (who seems to be too busy to visit workshop or community outreach programs) and complain about robot or driving and why our team is not winning.

[GeeTwo]

Originally Posted by Lij2015

This is all good info, and i wish our team could simply have uncaring people drop on their own!

Originally Posted by Tungrus

Murphy's law...this ^^^ will never happen!

Not never - we had a bunch leave on their own. We had the same problem this year - more people interested in joining than our facility could handle. We didn't have any written application other than the usual medical and safety forms. What we did do was have "tryouts". Each mentor and several of the returning varsity team members (who did not have to try out) came up with challenges ranging from cutting out a piece of cardboard according to a blueprint to writing down how to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich to building a tower out of blocks to modifying the standard arduino sweep() program to do a couple of fancier things. We ran tryouts in "stations" and graded both on aptitude and attitude. The tryouts were available on about eight evenings, and most students could get through it in six. About one-third of the original applicants never finished the process. We only had to "cut" a few more - and those were selected from the whiners and distractors. We would have also cut based on too low a "good enough" standard, but those all fell under the others anyway.

The attitude of this year's team was an order of magnitude better than last year's. As one of my co-workers said when told the story: personnel is policy. Select motivated people to start, and it won't take nearly as much to keep them going. We also had a much lower attrition rate from startup to the stop build than in previous years (<10% vice about 20%). I don't think we lost anyone between stop build and CMP.

Oh, yes, we used aptitude plus requests plus needs plus a few personal rules (e.g. boy friend and girl friend must be in separate departments) to select departments.

[sanddrag]

Originally Posted by asid61

We let everyone in. Generally we have around 130+ applicants, and we split them up for trainings. By build season we usually end up with around ~80 people left, and by the end of build no more than ~40 are on the team. Those are just guesstimates, but we do lose a lot of people.

That's a lot of time, energy, effort, and resources invested in a significant number of people who ultimately end up decided not to be a part of the team. This isn't an issue for any of your mentors? Have you considered trying to devise a way to determine which 40 of the 130+ are really serious about remaining involved, prior to investing so heavily in them only to see them drop out?

Last year, we had 45 applications for 12 spots on the team. After reviewing applications and transcripts, talking to some of their teachers, and conducting some informal interviews, we selected 16 of the 45. We expanded the size of our team by 4 students, due to the number of qualified applicants we had. Our team of 36 students that was selected in May of 2014 is now 35 students today in May of 2015. Approximately 1 student per year decides not to continue with the team, and this is the norm for us. So, we must be doing something right in the application process. I can afford to have one per year decide this is not for them, but not 90+.

With the remaining 29, we started two VEX robotics teams. Anyone who wanted could join the VEX teams, and no one was turned away. Observing the students work and compete on these teams is a very good indicator of the degree of success they will achieve on our FIRST team. Not every student from the VEX teams will be invited to reapply for the FIRST team.

As we move forward with increasing demand for our program, participating for one full season on the VEX team will be an absolute requirement for joining the FIRST team. We will also be looking to see that students are willing to mentor elementary school Lego robotics teams. Furthermore, we are looking to see that applicants to Team 696 are enrolling in classes during the school day that supplement their intended role on the FIRST team.

When deciding which applicants to admit, we do not take only the best kids, although they must not have any Ds or Fs on their report cards. We look at two factors: What can the student do for the team, and what can the team do for the student? We also look at the student's college and career ambitions, and their desire and dedication to take a meaningful role in this project, rather than just participate as yet another activity on their resume.

[Starke]

Originally Posted by Lij2015

Our team this year had a problem that its never had before, too many people on it.
Our build space is a small shop that can probably only fit 15 or so people working (Which isn't really a problem as our mechanical team wasn't bigger than that this year) in it at a time and we only have two smaller sized classrooms for the other type work. So we are debating some sort of application or evaluation process for new members and cutting old ones (this isn't my question, I know exactly who I'd cut)

This year we almost grazed 40 students and probably about 10-12 of those students were super apathetic and didn't care to actually do anything. Since we have a pretty open policy on who can be there it kind of just happened and this caused some administrative nightmares.

What selection or evaluation process does your team have for selecting the students on it? Also if any of those processes involve an application I'd love to see a few examples!

Every year, students fill out an application that is reviewed by the mentors and team advisors: http://www.snobot.org/application

Students also must meet requirements to be part of the Build Season Core Team. These requirements are outlined in our handbook: http://snobot.org/handbook