One thing I have heard is that having long-ish application stages provides value by getting more people to think about relevant topics (I have heard this from at least two orgs I think). E.g. having several hundred people spend an hour writing a paragraphs about an AI safety topic might be good by virtue of generally having more people think more about this being good. I haven’t seen a write-up weighing up the pros and cons of this though.
I agree this can be bad for applicants.
One thing I have heard is that having long-ish application stages provides value by getting more people to think about relevant topics (I have heard this from at least two orgs I think). E.g. having several hundred people spend an hour writing a paragraphs about an AI safety topic might be good by virtue of generally having more people think more about this being good. I haven’t seen a write-up weighing up the pros and cons of this though. I agree this can be bad for applicants.