Thanks Chris! Yeah, I think that’s definitely a potential downside—I imagine we’ll definitely meet at least a couple of people smack in the middle of the quarter who go “Wow, that sounds cool, and also I never heard about this before” (this has happened with other clubs at Stanford).
I think the ways to mitigate failure due to this effect are:
Outreach early (when students still read their emails) and widely (to hopefully get the invitation message to everyone who would consider joining).
Don’t turn down students we find later, instead offer a lot of encouragement and a follow-up plan to join the reading group next term (10-week quarters for us).
This has the downside of latency in that we’re potentially delaying an impactful career, though maybe this isn’t significant compared to the latency of taking enough courses/doing enough research to graduate.
Semester schools could also offer the reading group twice per ~15-week semester, though that sounds a bit intense.
For promising students waiting for the next term, still offer them 1-on-1s, suggest things for them to read/work on independently, invite them to special reading group events like visits from guest alignment professionals, and maybe invite them to some core-only events.
Alternatively, if we find a student who has already read a bit, we could consider having them join a reading group cohort part-way through the year.
Thanks Chris! Yeah, I think that’s definitely a potential downside—I imagine we’ll definitely meet at least a couple of people smack in the middle of the quarter who go “Wow, that sounds cool, and also I never heard about this before” (this has happened with other clubs at Stanford).
I think the ways to mitigate failure due to this effect are:
Outreach early (when students still read their emails) and widely (to hopefully get the invitation message to everyone who would consider joining).
Don’t turn down students we find later, instead offer a lot of encouragement and a follow-up plan to join the reading group next term (10-week quarters for us).
This has the downside of latency in that we’re potentially delaying an impactful career, though maybe this isn’t significant compared to the latency of taking enough courses/doing enough research to graduate.
Semester schools could also offer the reading group twice per ~15-week semester, though that sounds a bit intense.
For promising students waiting for the next term, still offer them 1-on-1s, suggest things for them to read/work on independently, invite them to special reading group events like visits from guest alignment professionals, and maybe invite them to some core-only events.
Alternatively, if we find a student who has already read a bit, we could consider having them join a reading group cohort part-way through the year.