so the dates have been released for Championships… April 27-30 i believe.
Which happens to be the weekend before AP tests. 100% of our students take AP exams. A few take about 7 each year. Our mentors have finals that Monday. So…the idea has been thrown around in our group to attend 3 regionals without the intent to attend championships.
I was just curious on what peoples thoughts on that was? Are any other teams in the same situation?
And this is only thoughts, not saying this is our plan.
Well, from one GA Team to another, in the past, I would’ve jumped on the chance to go to nationals. In next year’s case, nationals aren’t exactly in our backyard, and a trip to St. Louis would meaning coming back Saturday afternoon at the latest. Which, in this case, means a day of rest before students began the exam sessions.
But there is no doubt that the splendor of championships is beyond that of any regional, and it’ll be interesting to see if FIRST does something new in St. Louis.
With this said, our school takes AP testing very seriously, so I’m wondering if our school would even let our students go to nationals on these dates…
I would recommend if you are able to, and your students/their parents have no issues, then go for it. Try and get some studying done on the bus/plane. Implement a study session in the afternoon.
This is a big big red flag for me.
Jane
Studying early is just a matter of being disciplined. If success on a test hinges on studying the material in the one or two days/nights just before the exam, then you haven’t mastered the material. That doesn’t mean that no one “survives” academically by cramming before exams; but it does mean that studying right before a test is not required.
Returning rested might mean missing out on enough of the fun to make the trip a poor choice, or might not.
Perhaps folks only travel if they do well on a practice exam (or in study hall sessions?) taken shortly before the trip?
Blake
You have a week between the Championship and the very first AP exam. I honestly don’t think anyone needs to cram for tests for that long. If APs were the very next week, I would say no. but they’ll have at least 8 days for the close - to - test intensive review. If they need more than 8 days, I have trouble believing they paid attention at all in class.
IMO 3 regionals is actually more detrimental to academic success, since unless you go 1-3-5 or 2-4-6 you will be doing back to back at least once.
Mentors having finals on Monday? That’s rather different, and those are actual college classes. No way should they go.
the Exam starts May 2, the Monday after Championships…:ahh:
And yes, we will be having a meeting with the team parents, mentors, teachers, and school representatives to discuss if we can go.
Jane: Yea…im 99.99% sure i wont be albe to attend. WAY too much at stake. Though i may be able to change my finals schedual. The dean of my school happens to love FIRST and be very involved. but even then…professors dont like it when you are the ONLY one they have to make another exam for…
May be a week after the CMP (I am not sure aqbout the date) I will have my final exam in computer science that is one of the most important for me
hard decision!
SEVEN AP exams by one student? That just sounds excessive. I know this isn’t a debate about the merits of AP tests, but how is it even possible for a student taking 7 AP exams (I assume that is probably more like 3-4 AP courses, with 3-4 exams being taken independently) to make a meaningful contribution to an extracurricular activity?
You’d be surprised. We’ve had kids who have done things like this and have been the backbones of either programming or mechanical.
Also, I don’t know many people who study more than a few days for AP tests, especially if they put in the effort during the course of the year. Your kids should be fine.
I have a tough time sympathizing, what I’m hearing is you and your students have the foresight 9 months ahead of time to identify the issue. Why not just prepare ahead of time.
I took a good deal of APs in high school, it wasn’t very difficult to prepare ahead of time; AP classes/tests aren’t nearly as hard as people make them out to be (or useful as they’re said to be for that matter).
Let the kids make an adult decision, they’re adult enough to take more than a full course-load of college classes after all.
I have Bagrut tests (The ticket to the university in Israel):
Math
Phisycs
Computer Science
Hebrew
Citizenship
English
History
FIRST gets you out of school for 3-5 months, it is hard to study when FIRST is on your mind, but I will pass it.
While that would be ideal (for students to make their own decisions), that really isn’t going to happen.
As for seven APs-one girl on our team will be taking AP Bio, Euro, both Englishes, BC Calc, and if she decides to, Environmental Science. All of these would be prepped by a class except for Environmental Science. She’s also part of the leadership, as well as a coxswain on the crew team. So yes, it is possible, and she does contribute a lot to her extracurriculars by prepping a lot during the summer.
The problem is not that we need the time to cram. It would mostly be to alleviate nervousness and rest up before the tests. To balance that goal with the stress and time that Championships takes up? I don’t totally know how we would manage that. St. Louis is at least a ten-hour drive from Atlanta, and even if we fly, which would probably be more expensive, we’d still be tired.
And that’s just pre-college exams. Our mentors’ exams are for graduating college, and in one case, heading off to med school. So-pretty important stuff.
What is everyone else thinking about tests and championships? I know some people said they have standardized tests that weekend that would have to be made up?
That’s why I said let the kids make an adult decision; the team goes, and if a kid can’t handle doing both, he will have to choose one or the other (I would assume that means the student chooses to miss champs).
My concern is not the study time, it is the rest time. If you are traveling and don’t get back home until late Saturday or Sunday morning (or even Sunday afternoon or evening) it will be hard to get your rest schedule back on track by Monday morning. I think that Chemistry, Enviro, Comp Sci and Spanish would be the most affected. Those are the Monday and Tuesday exams. I am sure that if we qualify for the Championships we will have to discuss this issue, as I am sure other teams will. Thanks for bringing it up.
Then again, as a personal matter this is an easier weekend for me, since it does not fall on the weekend of our big home track meet, which is also by far our biggest fund raiser for the track team. It is in the middle of the quarter for Ohio State, so it shouldn’t be a problem for our mentors.
I think if a student is taking AP classes because they chose to get a deeper education (rather than being prodded into looking good for colleges) they would be fine going to the Championship barring a Monday exam. For me personally, RPI pushed its exams back so I have a good 2 week window. I will go if 2791 goes, and if not I’ll probably end up at Vex.
Actual debate on one of my college teams: For competition, do we go to Texas for finals, or California for spring break (lots of profs like to give tests right before spring break, especially during our 2-day travel window)?
Knowing that there is a conflict coming up, or a potential conflict coming up, means that plans can be made to mitigate the damage, if any, that that would cause. Even if your team is one of those teams that will only go to the Championship if they qualify, you should discuss this now.
Why now and not when (if) you qualify? Let’s assume that you do not qualify first. You’ve had a discussion about what you want to do in the case of qualifying, which covers topics like time management and studying ahead–not a bad discussion to have anyway. Now, let’s assume that you do qualify. Instead of trying to figure out who can and can’t go due to tests and what-have-you in the 3 days you get, you know that, say, 5 students won’t be able to go, 10 students will definitely be able to go, and 4 students are questionable right from the get-go, and can plan accordingly.
My personal opinion is that if you think it’s not a good idea for your team for whatever reason, don’t do it. Lack of studying for finals and APs would probably qualify as a good reason not to go to the Championship.
Bonus idea: Don’t go to a third competition at all, and save the money for a) a second robot to practice with, b) postseason events, c) next year’s registration, d) next year’s championship, e) seed money for a big fundraiser (assuming that the school district or sponsoring organization will allow you to save the money, of course).
Now, about that dilemma I opened with: The decision the Aero Design team (who had that question) reached was CA for spring break, partly because we didn’t want to have to make up finals, and partly because the weather would probably be better (and partly because we’d be on spring break as soon as we got done with the competition). Note that mid-semester tests are a little bit easier to make up than finals at SDSM&T, so that played a little bit of a role.
Check the dates. VEX World Championships are on the same weekend. 
Our team constantly battles championships and exams, but more so on the college level. The last 5 years the championships have fallen either on the week of final exams, or the week before final exams. Obviously this is tough on the mentors because they either need to make up the exam, or study in a very short amount of time.
However, I can’t recall a single mentor in the past 5 years who didn’t go to the Championship because of finals, and as far as I know everyone did okay on their exams.
It’s been said here, but I’d like to reiterate. Particularly in AP classes, you are learning for an entire year for one test. Most likely you’ve taken countless practice exams in addition to the usual class work that needs to be completed. Hopefully your hard work over the course of the year has allowed you to approach the days leading to the AP exam with a sense of confidence and relaxedness. However, attending or not attending championships is something that is completely up to you and your team. What works for one team, may not work for another.
-Brando
As a mentor I attended a regional the weekend before I took the FE exam (IIRC) and I found it very nice to focus on something else for a bit. It should just be an incentive to get your studying done early, because no one crams for exams anyway 
For the past three years, the date of Battlecry@WPI has been around the time of AP exams (either the weekend before or between AP exam weeks, I believe). It’s a great event and my team loved attending it when these events did not conflict, but we decided it was not feasible for our team to attend on the years it did conflict. Maybe it’s not quite the same as the Championship, but don’t feel that you need to go to the Championship if it’s going to put undue stress on your students and/or your mentors. Their academic habits and successes are important to their futures.
While the AP exams are a big deal, the thing that worries me even more is that the mentors also have their college final exams. (I’m also shocked that they’re the first week of May- ours are always the third or fourth week of May.) Between robotics and math team competitions, I missed a lot of school in high school during the spring, but it was no big deal. I was a motivated student and I stayed on top of the work fairly easily. College is a different story- I work even harder, but missing even one day of classes can be detrimental to understanding the material in that class, and professors are not as easy going about making work up. (Example: Last fall I missed one day of a lab class while representing MIT at the SWE National Conference, and my professor refused to let me make up the work because I “was not taking school seriously by putting my extracurriculars first”. (Side note: I disagree with her about this; I think in the long run my interactions that day with women practicing engineering will be more valuable than the four hours I would have spent in that lab class.)) Maybe not everyone is like me; maybe your mentors are superheros at succeeding in their college courses and have no problem missing classes, or maybe their professors are more lenient in allowing make-up work or rescheduling exams. Still, I think missing two or three days of classes the week before your final exams is nothing to laugh at. The Championship is great, and I really wish I could have been there for the past two years, but I know I made the right decision for me by going to class and watching the webcast on Friday afternoon and Saturday after class. You have to make the right decision for your whole team, with the input of your whole team. Maybe you can do it this year, maybe you can’t.