I just have a couple questions I need to get answered (one would be the poll and one is the question bellow). If you would just take a second to answer please.
How do the students benefit from being on a FIRST team?
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Most kids in our club ends up going to a engineering school like Drexel. -
This year i came in never using a tool except for a drill and hammer and learned so much then the best feeling was being able to improve my skills and teach them to other people right after I learned it myself.
for example: Using a lathe, weilding, bandsaw, sander, pneumatics, and electronics.
Almost all our kids go on to engineering, with the exception of a few that go on to business, digital arts, and one that’s now a machinist.
FIRST is a life changing experience. While all of my friends who aren’t on FIRST have no idea what they want to do, I’m sitting here knowing exactly what I want to do. It’s opened up tons of opportunities to try out different things. It’s like an internship without the pay.
I’ve become more inclined to try and fix things myself when they break. I learned how to use the Lathe this year, and I want to learn how to program the Mill next year as well as welding. Last year, there was hardly any fabrication done by the team, this year there was hardly any fabrication done by the machine shop, so it let us learn and do it for ourselves.
Not everyone on our team does, but most do. I, for one, plan to go into a music career.
Our team has done brilliantly in inspiring students into engineering fields. We have one graduate from 2004 who is currently pursuing a mechanical engineering degree at Kettering, while other students who weren’t interested in engineering and who have worked with the Chairman’s award pursue degrees in political sciences and business.
Right now about 70% of our team seeks a technical-related career in the future, including electrical/computer engineering for myself.
This program has done a brilliant job in inspiring people to pursue technical and business related careers, and has proven that science and technology is not that intimidating as some may think it may be. 
How do the students benefit from being on a FIRST team?
The most fundemental answer: they get to meet and spend time with engineering and technology professionals, to see for themselves what their careers are like.
They may then decide to pursue those careers, or not to. The power comes from having a wealth of information on which to base their career decisions.
I myself was on team 11 for all 4 years of my highschool career. While I didn’t go into engineering, I did learn what I want to do with my life through FIRST. Thanks to FIRST I’m now going to school to persue a major in radio/tv broadcasting. How? Well ever since going to my first regional I wanted to do play by play…now after 4 years and numerous competitions, I’m being invited to several competitions to do play by play for them.
As for what I’ve taken away? I feel that i’m a much fuller person. The knowledge I’ve taken away from this, couldn’t even be measured in how many classes I would have to take in school…I wouldn’t change my decision to join FIRST for the world.
I’m not sure that this poll is asking right question to ask if you want to think about the bigger picture.
I think it requires basically 4 questions:
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What percentage of freshman students at your high school plan on pursuing a degree in technology or engineering?
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What percentage of graduating seniors at your high school plan on pursuing a degree in technology or engineering?
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What percentage of freshman students at your high school’s FIRST team plan on pursuing a degree in technology or engineering?
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What percentage of graduating seniors students at your high school’s FIRST team plan on pursuing a degree in technology or engineering?
Now I’m not going to pretend to assume that this sort of metric is the only valuable thing that comes out of student participation in FIRST. I’d be willing to say that regardless of your desire to pursue a hi-tech degree, if you participated on a FIRST team with good mentors and put something into it, you’re probably better off then you would be otherwise.
Ideally, according to FIRST’s goals, you’d like to see a change of career choices after participation and hopefully a higher percentage than your high school overall. If you’re only recruiting a bunch of students that are already pretty certain they’re set to a technology or engineering degree, you probably want to boost your efforts to reach out to those who aren’t sure about their future or think that engineering isn’t accessible to them.
Just some thoughts.
Matt
Many of our students do not know what they are going to do coming into the club, and I’m not sure how much it influences their decision. The team does give them the chance to feel what it’s like to have to work with real life deadlines, restrictions, and other fun problems. Plus I think they learn a bit of responsibility as well.
As for the careers, we’ve had some that have gone off into networking and computers, and some that go into culinary school or pursue biology.
at our remote kickoff, Jim Beck told us a story about how one student came up to him and was really ashamed, saying that he was going to study business instead of engineering. Mr. Beck said that what you go on to do doesn’t matter, as long as it’s something that YOU feel passionate about. The moral is, yes, FIRST is trying to get more students into science and technology, but if the FIRST program made you realize you had another passion, that was great. It changed your life for the better.
FIRST’s stated goal is to inspire new engineers and scientists. However while this is for the most part the result, I’d say its most consistent and greatest benefit is that it inspires passion. Passion in whatever somebody wants to do. FIRST teams are like a business so for somebody to be inspired and become passionate about business is not surprising. Many kids love the marketing aspects and want to become everything from PR reps to graphic designers, right on up to musicians. By experience FIRST they were able to use their talents and in doing so ignited their passions in a way that will give them goals, drive and purpose for the rest of their lives.
This is very important. One of the things Woody and Dean have stressed at the last couple kickoffs is that Americans(and many Western nations too) need to get up and do things. Its not our right to the wonderful quality of life we lead. We need to embrace the desire to create and act. FIRST instills the passions in people that will help them in this respect because if you don’t step up and do something, somebody else in another country who is clamoring and starving for your job will.
Back on track to the exact question on hand:
I’m an example of a success story. I’m now an engineering student at a prestigious university, just like the team president before me. As for the rest of my team I would say only about half go on to pursue engineering. Many of those wouldn’t have considered it if they hadn’t joined. But as I said above most leave knowing that they have something that they want to do and that is just as important. So in conclusion FIRST changes lives!