I worry that the current format of this program might filter out promising candidates who are risk averse. Specifically, the fact that candidates are only granted the actual research opportunity “Assuming all goes well” is a lot of risk to take on. For driven undergraduates, the cost of a summer opportunity falling through is costly, and they might not apply just because of this uncertainty.
Currently your structure is like PhD programs which admit students to a specific lab (who may be dropped from that lab if they’re not a good fit, and in that case, will have to scramble to find an alternative placement).
Maybe a better model for this program is PhD programs who admit a strong cohort of students. Instead of one two-week research sprint, maybe you have 2-3 shorter research sprints (“rotations”). From a student perspective this would probably lower the probability of them being dropped (since all of the mentors would have to dislike them for this to happen).
What you’re currently doing seems like a fine option for you with little downside for the students if:
1) “Assuming all goes well” means >90% of students continue on with research
2) The projects are sufficiently disjoint that it’s unlikely a student is going to be a good fit for more than one project (I think this is probably false but you know more than me, and maybe you think it’s true)
3) 2-week research sprints are much more valuable than 1-week research sprints (I am not convinced of this but maybe you are)
If not all of these are the case I argue it might be better to do rotations / find other ways to make this less risky for candidates.
Other idea to avoid filtering out risk averse candidates: You could promise that if they don’t get matched with a mentor, they can at least do <some other project> , for example, they could be paid to distill AI Safety materials.
I worry that the current format of this program might filter out promising candidates who are risk averse. Specifically, the fact that candidates are only granted the actual research opportunity “Assuming all goes well” is a lot of risk to take on. For driven undergraduates, the cost of a summer opportunity falling through is costly, and they might not apply just because of this uncertainty.
Currently your structure is like PhD programs which admit students to a specific lab (who may be dropped from that lab if they’re not a good fit, and in that case, will have to scramble to find an alternative placement).
Maybe a better model for this program is PhD programs who admit a strong cohort of students. Instead of one two-week research sprint, maybe you have 2-3 shorter research sprints (“rotations”). From a student perspective this would probably lower the probability of them being dropped (since all of the mentors would have to dislike them for this to happen).
What you’re currently doing seems like a fine option for you with little downside for the students if:
1) “Assuming all goes well” means >90% of students continue on with research
2) The projects are sufficiently disjoint that it’s unlikely a student is going to be a good fit for more than one project (I think this is probably false but you know more than me, and maybe you think it’s true)
3) 2-week research sprints are much more valuable than 1-week research sprints (I am not convinced of this but maybe you are)
If not all of these are the case I argue it might be better to do rotations / find other ways to make this less risky for candidates.
Other idea to avoid filtering out risk averse candidates: You could promise that if they don’t get matched with a mentor, they can at least do <some other project> , for example, they could be paid to distill AI Safety materials.