HS Robotics team -> college major?

[Anonymous]

One is studying philosophy, one math, one physics & engineering.

[Anonymous]

3 dx - cs/cs/math

[Anonymous]

OP here - thanks all for your responses!
Background- my kid is an underclassman, who joined a First team this year. This surprised me since they’ve never been much into legos/building sets and instead have loved reading and drawing.
They are enjoying it and want to continue next year. Since First is such a time commitment, I wanted to get a sense of kids who didn’t go into the more obvious cs/mech e routes.
Above poster who talked about the perception that stem ECs lead to stem majors really connected w/me. I agree it’s a misguided idea but keep hearing about how college apps are supposed to tell a cohesive story.
Anyway this is a new world to us and I haven’t yet connected w/other parents of team kids. So thanks for sharing and glad to see yiur kids doing well across the spectrum.

[Anonymous]

One thing to keep in mind, OP, is that your student can describe their involvement in the team in their application. This will allow them to make connections to what they want to study. For example, our team had a social media team. A student could link that to a future marketing major. Or the fundraising subgroup.

Or even grant request writing.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:One thing to keep in mind, OP, is that your student can describe their involvement in the team in their application. This will allow them to make connections to what they want to study. For example, our team had a social media team. A student could link that to a future marketing major. Or the fundraising subgroup.

Or even grant request writing.

+1 FRC asks teams to write "business plans", apply for corporate grants/fundraise, work on game strategy, etc. You really can structure FRC involvement to suit many college interests outside of obvious STEM fields.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP here - thanks all for your responses!
Background- my kid is an underclassman, who joined a First team this year. This surprised me since they’ve never been much into legos/building sets and instead have loved reading and drawing.
They are enjoying it and want to continue next year. Since First is such a time commitment, I wanted to get a sense of kids who didn’t go into the more obvious cs/mech e routes.
Above poster who talked about the perception that stem ECs lead to stem majors really connected w/me. I agree it’s a misguided idea but keep hearing about how college apps are supposed to tell a cohesive story.
Anyway this is a new world to us and I haven’t yet connected w/other parents of team kids. So thanks for sharing and glad to see yiur kids doing well across the spectrum.

I’m the PP with the non-STEM/IR kid. She applied to SLACs and did several college interviews, and she said FRC was always something colleges wanted to talk about, and the discussions were always positive. A lot of interest in why she did FRC given her profile (because I love it and have made great friends and started with FLL and kept learning and being able to do more each year) and what she did on the team. (75% technical, but she was also the outreach coordinator and worked to coordinate with other teams— provide mentors to ES and MS Teams, invite MS FLL to visit their meetings, coordinate with other HSs to arrange scrimmages, etc).


Her college admissions results were unusually strong. She was admitted to her ED school with a GPA below the 25% (but a lot of unweighted foreign language and fine arts classes). We were concerned because 11 of her APs were in humanities. Honors science, but came off the honors bath track in Algebra II. Even with Calc, she took standard and not AP. So, demonstrating hands on STEM aptitude with FRC, plus a 33 STEM average on the ACT (36 verbal) may have helped offset any concerns about the rigor of her HS STEM curriculum. She probably also got some points for having stuck with two major activities since ES— she did both robotics and orchestra from 4th-12th and was in her HS’s top orchestra. And for FRC because it’s a team activity. That plus playing in music ensembles showed an ability to work well with others.

Also, she did have plenty other things on her resume that showed an interest in and talent for IR. Her curriculum— all the non-fine arts humanities APs except psych (both English APs; both Econs; both US and Comp Government; US, World and European, HUG— and reported out a couple 4s bunch of 5s in 10th-11th). Plus, a non-AP freshman year course about the US legal system. She took through AP in one foreign language, three years of a second and did summer NSA StarTalk followed by FSLI-Y in a third foreign language. All started from scratch as a non-Native speaker. She did a short term (2 weeks on each side) student exchange with a county where her FSLI-Y language was spoken. She had a student come to the US to live with us and attend HS with her for two weeks, and then she went and stayed with that student in her home and went to her HS. And she had a great CA essay about “why I always take the window seats in planes”. So, her interest in an IR major was supported.

IMO, FRC helped because it was clearly something she enjoyed enough to invest 9 years in, rather than something she did just for college and because it was unusual, given her profile. It made her stand out (in a good way). Lots of MUN kids who want IR and FRC kids who want engineering/ CS. “IR applicant with years of technical FRC experience? Huh. That’s interesting…”

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP here - thanks all for your responses!
Background- my kid is an underclassman, who joined a First team this year. This surprised me since they’ve never been much into legos/building sets and instead have loved reading and drawing.
They are enjoying it and want to continue next year. Since First is such a time commitment, I wanted to get a sense of kids who didn’t go into the more obvious cs/mech e routes.
Above poster who talked about the perception that stem ECs lead to stem majors really connected w/me. I agree it’s a misguided idea but keep hearing about how college apps are supposed to tell a cohesive story.
Anyway this is a new world to us and I haven’t yet connected w/other parents of team kids. So thanks for sharing and glad to see yiur kids doing well across the spectrum.

Mine did robotics in middle school. It was fun. But then got involved in rocketry in high school. Currently a freshman in college studying mechanical engineering. Totally his thing. Nerds are going to nerd.

[Anonymous]

I’m the PP with the non-STEM/IR kid. She applied to SLACs and did several college interviews, and she said FRC was always something colleges wanted to talk about, and the discussions were always positive. A lot of interest in why she did FRC given her profile (because I love it and have made great friends and started with FLL and kept learning and being able to do more each year) and what she did on the team. (75% technical, but she was also the outreach coordinator and worked to coordinate with other teams— provide mentors to ES and MS Teams, invite MS FLL to visit their meetings, coordinate with other HSs to arrange scrimmages, etc).


Her college admissions results were unusually strong. She was admitted to her ED school with a GPA below the 25% (but a lot of unweighted foreign language and fine arts classes). We were concerned because 11 of her APs were in humanities. Honors science, but came off the honors bath track in Algebra II. Even with Calc, she took standard and not AP. So, demonstrating hands on STEM aptitude with FRC, plus a 33 STEM average on the ACT (36 verbal) may have helped offset any concerns about the rigor of her HS STEM curriculum. She probably also got some points for having stuck with two major activities since ES— she did both robotics and orchestra from 4th-12th and was in her HS’s top orchestra. And for FRC because it’s a team activity. That plus playing in music ensembles showed an ability to work well with others.

Also, she did have plenty other things on her resume that showed an interest in and talent for IR. Her curriculum— all the non-fine arts humanities APs except psych (both English APs; both Econs; both US and Comp Government; US, World and European, HUG— and reported out a couple 4s bunch of 5s in 10th-11th). Plus, a non-AP freshman year course about the US legal system. She took through AP in one foreign language, three years of a second and did summer NSA StarTalk followed by FSLI-Y in a third foreign language. All started from scratch as a non-Native speaker. She did a short term (2 weeks on each side) student exchange with a county where her FSLI-Y language was spoken. She had a student come to the US to live with us and attend HS with her for two weeks, and then she went and stayed with that student in her home and went to her HS. And she had a great CA essay about “why I always take the window seats in planes”. So, her interest in an IR major was supported.

IMO, FRC helped because it was clearly something she enjoyed enough to invest 9 years in, rather than something she did just for college and because it was unusual, given her profile. It made her stand out (in a good way). Lots of MUN kids who want IR and FRC kids who want engineering/ CS. “IR applicant with years of technical FRC experience? Huh. That’s interesting…”

Thanks PP! OP again - sounds like our kids have some overlap. I appreciate that there are many roles on a robotics team but like your kid, mine is interested in the building part but doesn’t seem headed in the engineering direction. They are also in orchestra and their APs will be more concentrated on Eng/Hist side than Math/Science. Still early though so can’t say for sure. Mine definitely won’t have the very impressive FL yours had! Good to hear that colleges are receptive to robotics in a non stem student (w/other activities tied to major).

[Anonymous]

My kid is CS/ECE major after being captain/lead programmer on his FRC team.
Has taken his high school FRC work to a whole other level in college, building an electric Formula 1 racecar in a year--puts in about 40 hours a week!