My name is Jon Rawlings, I am the team leader for the Kansas State University Formula Team. We have a problem with the timing of the competition being dead in the middle for finals week for our spring semester. While we can make arrangements for some of our team members to take finals early, we are still entirely at the mercy of each indvidual instructor to allow special arrangemants to be made.
I can't imagine we are the only school with this issue. Are a lot of other schools effected this way, and if so, has there ever been any effort to try to get the competition moved say, a week back, or even forward?

Same situation at Cornell. Not sure if anyone tried to move the date of competition, but that might just create new problems - a week forward, and it would interfere with graduation here.

We plan ahead for this asking our team to check with their professors early to check out alternative options - e.g., a makeup exam taken earlier. If impossible, we stagger the arrival of our team in Detroit - some will leave early to get there for Wednesday, some will leave Wednesday, some will even leave Thursday and miss out on the first day of static events. Barring that, we also make arrangements to have exams taken in Detroit, proctored by one of our faculty advisors. This sucks of course, but certainly exams have been taken at the competition hotel.

Not really sure if anything can be done about this - other schools (e.g., many Canadian schools) have a different problem...for them, the competition is outside of the school year altogether, since most of their courses end in April. The competition therefore would interfere with summer job plans, etc.

Here at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI), we don't have any interference with finals, but Saturday (endurance) is graduation.

It used to be that we only got 2-1/2 weeks of winter break, so finals ended in april. They added a week on to break, pushing finals to be the week before the competition, and pushing graduation into the competition. Our seniors now have the tough choice of going to the competition for the whole event, or going to their graduations to commerate with their families their $40k a year education.

Going to Formula Student poses an interesting situation for those with summer jobs, though most employers have been very flexible in that department.

It's just like with the SCCA nationals, which are in the 3rd week of classes here. Good luck taking a week of at that point in the semester.

www.formularpi.com

That is right, the competiton is outside of the school year for nearly all canadian schools. I have had to miss the past 2 because i can't afford to miss an entire month of summer work. I will definitly be coming this year though. I really think that professors should accomadate, especailly since this competiton reflects very well on all universities that participate.

Brent

www.ucalgary.ca/fsae

Cal Poly Pom. is almost as bad. 3-5 days without sleep, THEN start finals on Monday. It would be nice if the competition is held when EVERYONE is out, but there are a few problems to look at.
1) schools who are done in May will get a month of free time to fine tune their cars while the rest of us juggle school, FSAE, and employment. Not fair.

2) Many of us do this competition for senior project credit. If the competition is after graduation, it puts our degree in pending status until the advisor grades it and submits it, and the school processes it........on and on and on.

So....I'm not sure where to stand.
-Dave

I guess we're lucky in Australia because we generally finish exams in mid-November and the competition is held in early December. This gives us up to one month to work flat out on the car with nothing else to worry about. I can't imagine what it would be like any other way because we generally get most of the work on the car done during this month. As for working during the summer, we miss the first month because of SAE and then the next 2 months are spent starting design work on the new car.

Regards,

Scott "Maverick" Wordley &
Roan "Goose" Lyddy-Meaney
MOnash FSAE Wingmen

I confirm the situation that most canadian schools programs are finished before the competition. Since 3 years, no member from our team had problem dealing with their employers a week off for the competition. It's sure that you lose some money (but gain lots of experience), but I prefer to deal with this issue than with doing a final exam during the competition.

We've never had a problem. Last competition a number of us had conflicts in ME courses, but the ME department was very willing to accomodate us although I ended up taking 5 exams in 4 consecutive days.

For other subjects, no professor has ever made a fuss (they are pretty understanding when they see what you do) but if they did, the ME department would probably go to bat for us. Yet another good reason to maintain good relations with the faculty! We also made sure to notify professors well in advance.

If you're running into problems with professors, approaching your FSAE advisor for help is a probably good place to start.

Lehigh Formula SAE

www.lehigh.edu/~insae/formula

The competition falls square into our finals week, which is frustrating as we can't even arrange an observation trip to Detroit. Universities tend to have it easy here, though.

Marc Jaxa-Rozen
École Nationale d'Aérotechnique