Here’s why we’re removing the application from all HackCville courses

We’re excited to announce that we’re removing the application from all of HackCville’s semester skills courses. If you’re interested in learning about anything from data science to marketing to mobile app development (or any other of our 12 courses), now all you have to do is sign up.

This is a huge change for HackCville, and we wanted to share a bit more about why we’re making the change and what it means for us.

Our courses had applications for practical reasons, not exclusionary reasons.

We had applications for two reasons:

1. to find the most committed and interested students

2. we didn’t have the staff or physical space we needed to handle the incredible demand from students

Our aim was never to exclude people for the sake of excluding people. But we’ve received about 500 applicants for 200 spots each semester, which means we’ve been saying no to 300+ people each semester. That’s no fun for anyone.

Applications did an okay job of finding the right students, but not the best job.

We ran a extremely rigorous application review process that we were proud of. We reviewed each application blind of any identifying information and each question was scored by two different people. Our data science team ran tests each semester to check for biases in our process and never found any for 2 years straight.

Even with this process, a few students would drop each course throughout the semester. This was usually for understandable reasons (busy schedules, priorities changed, etc). But this meant there were now a few empty seats in each course that could’ve been filled by one of the 300+ students we denied.

We also found that many of our best student leaders actually applied multiple times to HackCville before getting accepted. To us, that means our application process was probably denying more awesome people that never applied again.

We challenged ourselves to find a better way.

About a year ago, we pushed ourselves to find a new way of teaching our courses to solve these challenges. Our goal is to serve all of the students who were interested in joining HackCville while still identifying committed, talented students who’d be a good fit for our community. We still want to vet for students who will be active, passionate, and hard-working members.

Last fall, we tested a new “open course” model with Hustle, our intro to entrepreneurship course. Instead of an application, students would complete 4 mini-projects throughout the semester. If students completed all 4 projects, they were granted HackCville membership. We essentially switched from an up-front exclusion model to an earned inclusion model. If you work hard and want to be here, we want you here.

We also restructured how the new Hustle course met: instead of meeting twice a week as a big group, Hustle would meet once a week as a large group and once a week in a one-on-one setting with a TA or instructor. This cut the number of bookings for our large classrooms in half, meaning we could host twice as many courses as before.

The results of our first “open course” were astounding.

• Instead of the usual ~90 applications we would normally receive for Hustle, 140 students signed up.
• Double the percentage of Latinx and African-American students signed up than in our other courses (with no change in marketing and outreach).
• Hustle students were more likely to recommend HackCville to a friend than in all of our other courses.
• Hustle students who completed the course were significantly more likely to continue staying involved in HackCville than other courses.
• Hustle students reported knowing their classmates better than in our other courses because of the increased focus on group projects.

This Fall, all of skills courses are moving to this new model: no application and open registration.

We’ve spent all summer reworking all of the curriculum for every course we offer, and training our staff to make this big transition. We’ve expanded the capacity of our classrooms and doubled the size of our teaching staff. This means we now have the capacity to teach 630 students this fall (~4% of UVA!) instead of 200.

We’ve also continued our financial aid policy where we proudly give support to anyone who needs it. The Galant Center at the McIntire School of Commerce and the Quantitative Foundation are key partners of HackCville that continue to make that possible.

You can see all of our courses at hackcville.com/courses. All you need to do is sign up by Thursday, September 5. We’d love for you to join!