So it seems that less than 1% of applicants will be accepted, but you still feel that applicants is the bottleneck. Please let me know if I misinterpreted some information.
Many thanks for your time answering our questions and for your great incubation program!
Yep—it’s true we get very large numbers of applicants. Perhaps 80% are speculative though, and don’t even really understand what we do. So the big number is somewhat misleading. Of the two or three hundred relevant candidates we receive, maybe 20 or so will make it onto the program. So for the purposes of those reading the EA Forum (who one would imagine are somewhat or very involved in EA) the likelihood of getting into the later rounds of the application process are actually pretty good.
I will add, however, that it’s a little difficult to communicate around this topic. On the one hand we want to ensure people know that it’s highly competitive; on the other, we don’t want to discourage people. Furthermore, each recent round of applications has been really quite different, so it’s not easy to generalize or lay out probabilities.
What we are confident about is that if we could find more excellent candidates we would be able to start more excellent charities. Our experience is that it makes a huge difference to find particularly well suited candidates. They tend to go on to start exceptionally effective organizations.
Hi Steve,
I feel a contradiction in these messages:
In this reply you recognize that applicants are the bottleneck, and you encourage more applicants
In your blog post Most common reasons people do not get into the program you explain that each year you get several thousand applications for an incubation program with 20-40 seats
So it seems that less than 1% of applicants will be accepted, but you still feel that applicants is the bottleneck. Please let me know if I misinterpreted some information.
Many thanks for your time answering our questions and for your great incubation program!
Yep—it’s true we get very large numbers of applicants. Perhaps 80% are speculative though, and don’t even really understand what we do. So the big number is somewhat misleading. Of the two or three hundred relevant candidates we receive, maybe 20 or so will make it onto the program. So for the purposes of those reading the EA Forum (who one would imagine are somewhat or very involved in EA) the likelihood of getting into the later rounds of the application process are actually pretty good.
I will add, however, that it’s a little difficult to communicate around this topic. On the one hand we want to ensure people know that it’s highly competitive; on the other, we don’t want to discourage people. Furthermore, each recent round of applications has been really quite different, so it’s not easy to generalize or lay out probabilities.
What we are confident about is that if we could find more excellent candidates we would be able to start more excellent charities. Our experience is that it makes a huge difference to find particularly well suited candidates. They tend to go on to start exceptionally effective organizations.
Thanks for the clarification!
I was expecting an answer like this, but it is great to have your confirmation. I will definitively apply!
Oh—and apologies for how long it took me to respond to this.