In my experience the bar isn’t about the impressiveness of the applicants’s achievements etc (the number of accolades I have is definitely below zero).
In the application each time I laid out what career directions I’m looking at and the reasoning behind them, and had clear, impact-focused and time-sensitive decisions or projects that I thought going to the conference could help with. And in fact the time I got put on the wait list was when I didn’t have as much of the latter. So I assume they factor these things in more than a record of achievement at least in some cases.
(I did lead a student EA group at one point, but that’s not a signal for anything competence-related like an internship is, like usually no one else is putting their hand up).
In my experience the bar isn’t about the impressiveness of the applicants’s achievements etc (the number of accolades I have is definitely below zero).
In the application each time I laid out what career directions I’m looking at and the reasoning behind them, and had clear, impact-focused and time-sensitive decisions or projects that I thought going to the conference could help with. And in fact the time I got put on the wait list was when I didn’t have as much of the latter. So I assume they factor these things in more than a record of achievement at least in some cases.
(I did lead a student EA group at one point, but that’s not a signal for anything competence-related like an internship is, like usually no one else is putting their hand up).