Team applications: Yes, or no?

[sanddrag]

We have never had the problem of too few interested students. We have always had and application, recommendation, and interview process. This in process in itself weeds out A LOT of potential applicants which is a good thing. If you can't work your way through an application, most likely you will have too much difficulty in much more complicated things we do. This year we actually turned down a few students for various reasons. We have also expedited a few applications through the process due to personal recommendations from people such as myself. The application process has traditionally opened in October, but this year we're planning to do early application in May (end of previous school year) for next season's team. We also plan to have a trial period in which students are accepted for a probationary period to gauge their interests and we can see their performance and commitment before the season.

We do not have the number of adults to support a team of 50 students. We can get by with 32 but that's about tops. You don't want a situation where more students = less work getting done (which often happens).

One difficulty we need to solve is finding a way to make the application process more standardized and objective. We made an error rejecting a student this year. We later reversed our decision an welcomed him to our team, which was one of the best things we ever did in this particular case.

If you have to try out for football, why not have to try out for robotics? My question is what exactly should the tryout be, and does it justly prove or disprove that a person would be a good team member to have?

[Chris Fultz]

http://www.chiefdelphi.com/media/papers/2379

That is a link to our 2010 business plan (2012 to be posted soon).

We have an application process. The application and information is in the business plan.

The "interviews" are conducted by the lead teacher, a few mentors, and our team captains.

We learn -

1. If the student is interested enough to fill out the form and sign up for an interview time, show up, and show some interest in what we do.

2. What the student knows about the team, the program and what we do.

3. That the student and their parent(s) understand the time and financial committment (fees and sponsorship requirements) to be a part of the team.

All students apply and have an interview. Returning students must also hae a resume. For returning students, the interview is also like a "performance review" where we talk about what they have learned, what they would like to learn, ideas for change, etc.

It is very rare that a student who goes through the interview process and wants to be on the team is not asked to be on the team.

We also have a 'pre-applications' open house so that perspective new members and their family can come to the lab, see the robots and the programs we do, talk to other students and mentors, and get a good feel for what "robotics" means.

[Allison K]

Originally Posted by sanddrag

We have never had the problem of too few interested students. We have always had and application, recommendation, and interview process. This in process in itself weeds out A LOT of potential applicants which is a good thing. If you can't work your way through an application, most likely you will have too much difficulty in much more complicated things we do. This year we actually turned down a few students for various reasons. We have also expedited a few applications through the process due to personal recommendations from people such as myself. The application process has traditionally opened in October, but this year we're planning to do early application in May (end of previous school year) for next season's team. We also plan to have a trial period in which students are accepted for a probationary period to gauge their interests and we can see their performance and commitment before the season.

We do not have the number of adults to support a team of 50 students. We can get by with 32 but that's about tops. You don't want a situation where more students = less work getting done (which often happens).

One difficulty we need to solve is finding a way to make the application process more standardized and objective. We made an error rejecting a student this year. We later reversed our decision an welcomed him to our team, which was one of the best things we ever did in this particular case.

If you have to try out for football, why not have to try out for robotics? My question is what exactly should the tryout be, and does it justly prove or disprove that a person would be a good team member to have?

Our team is in much the same situation. We are miles past the point of diminishing returns and being able to provide a quality experience for every member of the team. At our first few meetings this year we had 100+ interested students. We are looking at implementing an application/interview/probation process to make it possible to provide the experience that we want our students to have. I've been reading through old threads on the subject as well, and have thus far come up with this outline...

1) Every interested student must fill out an application every year. Acceptance in one year does not guarantee acceptance in future years.

2) The application process will include

• General Information so that we aren't running about in December trying to get completed emergency contact and student driver forms

• An Interest Survey which will use a 1 to 5 scale asking the applicant both their interest level and current skill level in each area of the team, to help us put together a balanced team

• A paragraph describing why the applicant would like to be a team member

• A personal recommendation (I don't think this will be required, but will certainly be a helpful addition)

• A statement signed by both the applicant and their parent to ensure that they understand the approximate time commitment expected of team members

3) All returning members will be subject to a performance review/interview in which they will have the opportunity to speak about what they accomplished as a member of the team and their plans for their future as a team member. (I'd like to say we'll have time to interview all of the new members as well, but that's stretching our resources a bit thin I think).

If any other teams are willing to post their application or questions in which they have used in the past I would love to have them as a reference in putting together the documents that we will use.

Our goal is not to exclude interested students, but we can't continue as we have been and still provide a quality experience. The plan is to also offer FTC so that everybody can still get a FIRST experience, but our FRC team is well past capacity.

Allison

[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