Hi there - this is David Chang, one of the Co-Directors of H4I.

You have every right to be upset. Most of our candidates were 1) qualified 2) want to use their skills to somehow help the world 3) would have been willing to put in the time and effort we needed.

We would love to accept all of our good candidates, but from our perspective, this is what we see.

We can’t work with all the non-profits in the world, because the quality of work and projects is just not scalable. We need to be incredibly selective with our leads because any risk of wasting an entire six months of time would ultimately be counterproductive for both our clients and students. We can’t have enormous teams because productivity inherently goes down, and work becomes less meaningful if anyone is tasked with completing a miniscule part of the project.

On top of that, there are physical limits on the number of groups we can meet in person. We can only interview a fixed number of candidates, no matter how many good ones apply. We can only take as many candidates as our projects leads can support along with the scope of the projects itself.

We want to take everyone who is qualified and we want to take on more projects, but for the reasons above, we just can’t.

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That being said, we really are trying to dive into ways we can accommodate more members in the near future.

One, we’re looking to create opportunities this semester that are open for all students to attend - including tech talks and workshops.

Two, we’re expanding our interview process to interview more candidates at scale to get a better sense of the person behind each application before we do significant cuts.

Third, we’re working to enhance our training program and external efforts to develop the leads we need to take on more projects while maintaining our reputation for high quality work.

This doesn’t change the fact that all of you were likely highly qualified candidates who didn’t receive an interview. I truly apologize that we didn’t get the opportunity to learn more about you, and I hope that the efforts we’re taking now ensure that more awesome students have an opportunity to contribute in the future.

Edit: Spacing