Are there college comps or is it mainly RI3D, what exactly does one do in a college team? Since im a senior this year I’ve been looking into it.
If you’re interested in the competition aspect of engineering competitions, there are a number of collegiate robotics tournaments outside of FIRST. FIRST programs serve pre-college students only.
If you are interested in remaining with FIRST in college, I recommend either mentoring a team or volunteering. Many (larger) colleges have official FIRST programs to help college students work with local teams - my alma mater Purdue has Purdue FIRST Program for exactly that. And as you mentioned, Ri3D includes a lot of college teams, but those aren’t really meant to be competitive.
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What are you looking to do after graduating?
If you want to continue building robots and competing on your own, you might consider Battle Bots or similar. And it doesn’t have to be the ultra expensive 250lb class robots you see on TV.
If you’re looking to stay involved in FRC, you could consider volunteering or working with another local team in a “mentor in training” capacity while you dedicate most of your time to school.
Ri3D is an interesting way to participate in FRC but I would caution that it does not exist as a means for recently graduated students to continue participating in FRC as if they never aged out of the program. The point of Ri3D is to create content to provide a resource to teams who may struggle with ideation, brainstorming, prototyping, etc. and should be treated as such.
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Seconding the other types of collegiate competitions. University Rover Challenge is one such competition I participated in for a number of years, it is wildly different from FIRST & FRC, and that’s true for most of the collegiate competitions.
VexU is another such option that might feel more familiar to FIRST, but not FRC (if I am remembering right, I never partook). There’s also a Lunar Mining competition that NASA puts on, I did that for a year too.
FRC will be here when you’re ready to come back after college, and personally I enjoy mentoring as much as, if not more, than I did as a student. The things I learned from doing competitions that weren’t FIRST helped me learn a lot of skills I probably wouldn’t have staying in the FIRST space.
Heavily recommend checking out some of the SAE competitions like Formula or Baja, too. I’m happy to answer any questions about the University Rover Challenge or the Lunar Mining competition.
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To anyone considering mentoring in college, I would only recommend it under these conditions:
- You have really good time management skills
- You can set healthy boundaries for how much time you are going to put into FRC and stick with it
- You also make a conscientious effort to try other non-FRC activities
College is by far the easiest point in your life to just decide to try something and go join some club that will teach you how to do that thing. Now that I’ve graduated, I miss being able to do that. Make good use of it while it lasts, FRC will always be there.
If you do end up mentoring, I strongly encourage finding a new team that you weren’t a student on. I think you learn a lot more working with a new team and creates a more clear distinction between your role as a student and your role as a mentor.
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I was planning to stay close to me team during college and just pop in and out to see what’s up then after college I’ll see if I have time to be a dedicated mentor.
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Popping in is one thing, just be careful about what Brian laid out. (1293 has a policy of not allowing alumni back for a year after graduation, though it’s not like we are going to bemoan them showing up for a random meeting now or then.)
I’d also suggest looking at event volunteering opportunities. Free food and a T-shirt is clutch as a college student, and it’s a good way to get your fix without getting tangled up in an extended project.
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