I’m writing my Common App essay about an experience of mine in FRC, and I was wondering if I needed to talk about how FRC (and most robotics programs) works. My main concern is if the admissions officer will understand strategy and scouting, and how alliance selection works (not too in-depth, just a basic understanding). The reason behind this is that the essay is centered around how I handled and learned from a very controversial alliance selection incident, so I don’t want to lose whoever is reading my essay because they don’t understand what’s going on. At the same time, explaining how it works would take away from my overall word count, giving me less room to tell my story and explain my growth.
First of all, don’t call it FRC without defining it. I had to google to find out what you were talking about. Even though ad coms may not know FRC directly, they are familiar in general with how competitions work. I wouldn’t waste a lot of space describing it. Maybe one sentence saying that alliances are important and why.
I agree that you should first define FRC. I am familiar with FRC and still felt unsure that you were referring to FIRST Robotics until I saw the mention of robotics.
The process involving alliances is confusing even after having had it explained to me numerous times. I would not waste precious essay space on this. Find a way to tell the story without needing that background knowledge. There will be a way to do this; it just may take some reflection and some tweaking of what you’ve written.
Consider running your essay by a parent or other trusted adult who doesn’t understand the alliance process to see if what you’re saying makes sense.
By the way, it seems like alliance selection “incidents” are super common, the rule rather than the exception. I have not read any FIRST materials on this, but my bet is that there’s a professional-education reason behind this process.
Your adcom or essay reader may be a former Philosophy or Economics major who has NO clue what FRC is or what you’re talking about. So, make sure you spell out the full name and have a phrase such as “Typically, …; yet this time…” Before you launch into your essay about alliances, mishaps, and unexpected lessons.
I ref and judge at FTC (FIRST Tech Challenge) events. I would suggest that you contact some FRC alumni and ask for their suggestions. Back when I was a coach, every year I had team members writing about their FTC experience in college applications. They would write a lengthy draft with everything they want to include and ask the counselor to check for balance between background information and main message. They then take it to their English teacher to revise and polish until the length is appropriate without sacrificing either context info or main message. Then they take it to a social studies teacher for another round of feedback.