Convincing athlete to commit to robotics?

[team-4480]

Originally Posted by GaryVoshol

You have options. As others mentioned, perhaps you could change some team meeting times. My thought is that you should recruit new team members, or encourage other existing team members to come more often, so that you will get more than 2.7 people at a meeting.

It is tough/nearly impossible to change the meeting times because our one and only mentor has a family to take care of. The time we meet currently is what works best for him. We would, of course, like another mentor(preferably a mentor with professional engineering experience), but living in a town of 400, it is much easier said than done.

The student is our most experienced mechanical builder so it is like have a Senior mechanical engineer leave a company and have to fill the void with entry level engineers. We will likely have two more committed members next year so that would probably bring the average to about 4.3, but these members need training so who would be better to teach them then our most experienced mechanical member?

From what I have talked to him over the past couple of weeks, he keeps mentioning how excited he is for the next build season challenge. But yes, I agree that whatever he has more passion for, he should go and do.

[Fusion_Clint]

Having graduated from a small Minnesota school myself, what you need is more kids and mentors on the team. You need more exposure, can you bring in kids from nearby schools, enlist the help of shop teachers, enlist the help of other teachers. In a school that small all of the folks need to work together, and not compete for the finite number of resources you have. Do you have any local industry, mechanics, farmers, electricians, we always had folks willing to help the school back home.

Casting aspersions on the basketball team as unsuccessful "The basketball team isn't going anywhere(last year the record was 5-15)", isn't an entirely honest argument from a struggling FRC team that finished 60th at your only event this year.

Bring your school and community together to solve your problems, they are larger than one student.

[team-4480]

Originally Posted by Fusion_Clint

Casting aspersions on the basketball team as unsuccessful "The basketball team isn't going anywhere(last year the record was 5-15)", isn't an entirely honest argument from a struggling FRC team that finished 60th at your only event this year.

Shots fired lol.

We got the short end of the stick because of who we were matched up against and with. Our robot functioned nicely every single match, even hitting a high goal in auto. Just some stats from that regional....

Scored 11.25 Auto points per match(7th in Auto OPR)

Scored average of 53.3875% of our alliance's points

Anyways, basketball is much different than robotics. Basketball requires a certain amount of natural talent(i.e. height, arm length, speed) in order to be successful and those variables typically don't change much. Robotics relies on ideas and execution of those ideas which changes a lot each year. One year you may have the best idea and the next the worst idea for your robot. My point is, just because we were matched with not the great teams does not mean that next year we will be getting 60th again.

[ASD20]

Originally Posted by Ed Law

I don't quite understand your point and your example. From listening to dozens of talks from admission officers, I gathered that colleges are interested in 6 main areas:
1) GPA
2) Standardized test scores
3) Essays and supplemental questions if any
4) Extra-curricular activities and Leadership
5) Work experience and Entrepreneurship
6) Recommendation letters
They are not in any particular order. Every college will put different things as higher priority. A student has more control over some of these than others but I would argue that there is nothing on that list that the student has no control at all. These are things that admission officers use to see whether the student will be a good fit for the college. What students want to do with their life has nothing to do with these 6 things. Are you suggesting that students should do whatever they want and not care about what colleges are looking for? And none of the 6 areas are things that could help in their future whatever they decided to pursue?

It's not that students should ignore college completely throughout high school, it's that by the time you are an incoming senior, there is very little you can change in a significant way. You have your essays and maybe SATs if you haven't taken them before (If you've already taken them the odds are you won't do that much better). Basically just don't let your grades drop and don't get suspended and let what happens happens. Also, high school seniors do not need to be told to think about college with every decision to think about college with every decision.

[FiMFanatic]

Originally Posted by Ed Law

I don't quite understand your point and your example. From listening to dozens of talks from admission officers, I gathered that colleges are interested in 6 main areas:
1) GPA
2) Standardized test scores
3) Essays and supplemental questions if any
4) Extra-curricular activities and Leadership
5) Work experience and Entrepreneurship
6) Recommendation letters
They are not in any particular order. Every college will put different things as higher priority. A student has more control over some of these than others but I would argue that there is nothing on that list that the student has no control at all. These are things that admission officers use to see whether the student will be a good fit for the college. What students want to do with their life has nothing to do with these 6 things. Are you suggesting that students should do whatever they want and not care about what colleges are looking for? And none of the 6 areas are things that could help in their future whatever they decided to pursue? To avoid further misunderstanding, I don't advocate that students join a club or activity just to look good on their resume to help them get into a certain field. If they have no interest in that field, then they should not be joining that activity. If you don't have passion in what you do, it will show on the application. Joining many activities do not make you look good. It actually makes you look bad. On the other hand, I do encourage younger students to try as many things as they have time for, then narrow down to the things that they enjoy the most.
I am not looking for an argument with you. I am not trying to convince you that I am right. You work with your students the way you want to.
Back to the OP, since your friend is looking into going to a community college, what I said to you before is not as important. It is really his choice. Sometimes in life, you have to do what makes yourself happy but there are people around you that you have to consider also. It is not always about you.

To those 6, I would add "Class Rank", as GPA (in a vacuum) can be very deceptive when comparing school to school.

Good post.

[ASD20]

Originally Posted by FiMFanatic

To those 6, I would add "Class Rank", as GPA (in a vacuum) can be very deceptive when comparing school to school.

Good post.

Class rank is also meaningless. Most schools just look at your raw transcript and calculate gpa using their own formula. Plus, it's all the same thing to the student.

[FiMFanatic]

Originally Posted by ASD20

Class rank is also meaningless. Most schools just look at your raw transcript and calculate gpa using their own formula. Plus, it's all the same thing to the student.

You couldn't be more wrong. As two of my good friends are college recruiters (1 an Ivy school, 1 a good private institution), they absolutely look at it. It may not matter much at all for 85% of schools, but the better ones care.

Not all high schools offer the same opportunity, so class rank differentiates who can outperform their peers. But you are correct, all (I would guess) recalculate GPAs based on the raw transcript info to make it apples-to-apples.

[smitikshah]

Originally Posted by Fusion_Clint

Do not encourage your student to base life decisions on what colleges may want.

Really agree with you here. I did several outside of school activities only because I was told by everyone how much it would help me look good to colleges but I ended up being miserable because I never enjoyed them that much. In addition I over exerted myself doing many different activities at the same time which only let me have about 3 hours of sleep (unfortunately a lot of high schoolers share this plight) a night for a while. I since have done some self reflecting and done what makes me happy and quit eveything else. Admittedly, I'm still working on some things.

I.e. I quit drama to dedicate myself to robotics fully and don't regret it.
I quit my instrument to take an extra AP and I do regret it.

I know I will end up at the school that is right for me if I be real with doing the activities I like to do.

The college process, while has its patterns, can also be pretty unpredictable. Whether the admissions officers will prefer a basketball player over a robotics kid who knows?

He should do what makes him happy and then go where it fits right for him. As a friend I encourage you to let him know you are not putting any pressure on him and are no expecting anything from him (dedication wise), unless he fully commits to robotics.

Maybe you should forward him this thread so he can read the feedback for himself without a mediator and then decide?

[ScandallB225]

Originally Posted by team-4480

Stay in Basketball:
- Make father happy(his father enjoys watching basketball during the winter)
- His girlfriend is the student manager of the team
- He feels like he might disappoint the team if he leaves
- He enjoys it

Commit fully to Robotics:
- He is a Senior so this would be his last year as a student
- The basketball team isn't going anywhere(last year the record was 5-15)
- He could be an awesome driver if he stayed and practiced
- There is always the chance to go to St.Louis
- He loves building robots

I should mention that he already is helping as much as he can, but by leaving basketball, he would be able to help out much more.

My advice; do not try to convince your friend. Encourage him to pursue HIS passion and support that decision. It sounds like he knows the attributes of each. Although difficult to remove pleasing others from the decision, I would hope the decision would be about his passion and not others' impressed wishes or impressions.
Unless your friend has committed to play basketball, he is not letting anyone down.

Has his father or girl friend ever been to an FRC event? In my experience FIRST sells itself. Especially FRC.

Although doing something to check off a box on a college application goes against my nature, I believe that most colleges look at participation as participation. Basketball robotics either is participation.

[anushad]

When my sports coach asked me to commit to either my sport or to robotics, the breaking point for me was that it was not possible for me to go pro in sports, but I do plan on going pro in robotics.

[GeeTwo]

Originally Posted by anushad

When my sports coach asked me to commit to either my sport or to robotics, the breaking point for me was that it was not possible for me to go pro in sports, but I do plan on going pro in robotics.

To take this even wider, for an FRC team member to "take it pro" doesn't necessarily mean that his/her job title will be "roboticist". It could be any of the following, and probably a lot more besides:

• Roboticist
• Mechanical Engineer (Technician)
• Electrical Engineer (Technician)
• Pneumatics Engineer (Technician)
• Software Engineer (Technician)
• Systems Engineer (Technician)
• Materials Engineer (Scientist) (Technician)
• Machinist
• Welder
• Physicist
• Programmer
• Mathematician (including statistician)
• Sales
• Marketing
• Advertising
• Project planner/manager
• Administrator
• Executive agent
• Administrative Assistant

And OBTW, Veronica (my daughter) is planning to become an ASL (American Sign Language) signer and possibly teacher. As she pursues this career, I am certain that she will exercise skills she learned or developed while competing on FRC 3946. Everyone can turn pro from FRC, even if [s]he chooses a non-STEM career path.

[Siri]

Originally Posted by GeeTwo

As she pursues this career, I am certain that she will exercise skills she learned or developed while competing on FRC 3946. Everyone can turn pro from FRC, even if [s]he chooses a non-STEM career path.

This part is also true of sports and other activities, however, if that's included in the definition of "going pro". Varsity basketball develops a large number of skills besides just bouncing a ball, to use Dean's phrase. The difference is really STEM focused.