<aside> 🎁 This is a bounty offered by Stoa to alumni + broader community to help build a more user-centric admissions + onboarding experience while meeting business goals.

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Context

Over the course of the last 18 months, Stoa has experimented with a number of ways to create a smooth “admissions” process.

• For Cohort 1, 2, 3 we had 5 text-response questions and 1:1 interviews.
• For Cohort 4 we had group discussions (~5 people)
• For Cohort 5, 6, 7 we ran a 90 minute open book test

And every format comes with a trade off.

A very hard admissions process that requires lot of time pushes away some high quality potential fellows. For example, videoasks filter for high intent to join Stoa - yet it pushes people to keep delaying their application.

1:1s with Aditya and Raj are great; but they end up burning them out.

The question is also not merely about admissions but customer education as well. As they go through the admissions process, people have a number of questions around curriculum, payment of fees, career services etc.

That brings us to the question....

The Problem

How should Stoa approach its admissions/onboarding process to achieve the following goals --

• Design a great consumer experience that allows them to evaluate whether Stoa is right for them
• Design a streamlined admissions process to help Stoa’s team evaluate if a person would make for a valuable member of Stoa community