Comments
I empathize with you, and I think it might be good to have this place to vent.
But I also think, as Lizka wrote, that being rejected from EAG isn't about failing some high standards. Rather it's about the conference being useful for you, and you being useful for other attendees (in the eyes of the admissions team).
I was also admitted to (and attended) one EAG and then rejected from the next one. Afterwards I did attend an EAGx and some other international EA programs. I don't feel that that one rejection meant anything about my worth. I haven't applied this year, but if I do end up applying and I get rejected, it'd still not mean anything about me personally.
I'm not writing this to erase your experience, but rather to offer others who apply another lens to look at it through.
Also I'm not affiliated with CEA, this is just my interpretation of how they work. But even if I were wrong and they did try to admit people by how "worthy" they were, CEA is just one small group of people, and they determine neither your real worth nor your impact on the world.
I want to write a quick note encouraging people not to view EA Global application decisions as overall evaluations of themselves, their status or identity "as EAs", or their potential for having a significant impact.
I should also say that I was rejected from the first EA conference that I applied to.
(I don't think my experience with this was as bad as it was for some others and don't want to use this fact to say that it's not reasonable to be sad about a rejection — I absolutely think it is! — but maybe it's a useful data point for what I'm saying, and useful context.)
I also know of cases where rejections seem, in retrospect, wrong, or were interpreted incorrectly — at some point, I was collecting these stories to see if we could improve the situation (unfortunately, this was at a time when I was overloaded and transitioning jobs, and the project went nowhere).
I don't know what criteria are being used to evaluate applications, but my impression is that the process tries to answer questions like, "is this person facing decisions that an EAG will help them with?" "Will their experience add to the balance of attendees and let others learn from them in a way that's hard to learn from others' experiences?" These are hard, aren't measures of "is this person a 'good EA,'" don't mean that someone is not impactful, and also mean that the same person can be rejected now and then accepted at future conferences.
And I want to cite the EA Global FAQ on admissions:
Relevant disclaimers: I work at the Centre for Effective Altruism (on the Online Team), and I was on the Events Team before that. This isn't an official response from the Events Team or anything like that, though!
FWIW core EAs have openly said a major reason to keep EAG small is the 'quality of conversation' at the event. This is a big reason they made EAG smaller again. So there is definitely a level of judgment going on.
Which "core EAs"? Many engaged EAs have their own preferences and theories re. EAG size, but in the end, only the CEA events team decides on admissions (sometimes consulting others afaik).
Some comments below that might be reasonably interpreted as being about 'quality of conversation':
Eli Nathan:
Habryka:
Howie Lempel:
Though in response to "there is definitely a level of judgement going on", it may be worth noting that the original claim in the EAG FAQ is that "this is not a judgement about the value of your work or your potential impact in effective altruism", rather than something like "this is not a judgement at all."[1]
This isn't at all to suggest that what people are feeling aren't valid though - I can definitely see how these might not feel like a meaningful difference.
Edit: MaxRa's comment about how these measures may in fact be (or seen to be) correlated with social standing may be of interest.
Clearly, answering questions like "is this person facing decisions that an EAG will help them with?" "Will their experience add to the balance of attendees and let others learn from them in a way that's hard to learn from others' experiences?" require some level of judgement, and I don't think Lizka is trying to dispute this.
You can ask buck for his list of the core EAs.
I spontaneously want to push back a little against this, as I feel like this comment is missing that empirically EAG admissions do in fact non-accidentally correlate at least moderately with social standing in EA. So I'd say me being rejected would therefore generally be evidence of lower social standing and I'd want to acknowledge a rejection as such an update to myself, as opposed to try to bring myself to not see it this way, as you suggest.
(Though this update can in general be explained away by specific considerations, such as if you're seeking a career in a niche where you won't be able to give or receive much useful feedback.)
Elaborating a bit on why I think rejections correlate with social standing within the EA community, I think that even if the past and current admission criteria don't explicitly measure social standing, I think that
a) stuff like "Will their experience add to the balance of attendees and let others learn from them in a way that's hard to learn from others' experiences?" correlates moderately to strongly with things like career success in EA top priorities and general competence, and
b) "is this person facing decisions that an EAG will help them with?" correlates moderately to strongly with intelligence, education and promise for prusuing a career that the EA community prioritises.
And a) and b) in turn seem to me like fairly central factors of social standing within EA.
Upvoted this comment to make this message clear (though perhaps read sapphire's comment for an alternative take).
But I think the strongest point from Scott's Open EA Global remains a core problem:
The impression that getting EAG admission is a sign of your EA-worthiness is probably not going away soon. It almost feels like there should be 2 global conferences - one for EA networking so that people who might be highly impactful can have productive conversations/meetings etc, and then another one for the community as a whole to come together, meet new people, discuss issues broadly and be part of a community. The latter sounds like 'EA Global' to me, the former sounds like it should be called 'EA Co-ordination Conference' or something along those lines.[1]
This is just my impression of the situation, I know logistically it would be a lot more work for CEA to do - and I don't even know if that ought to be CEA's job to set up that kind of event.
There are two EA global conferences.
EAG with high restriction and EAGx with a much lower bar for attendance and higher frequency.
https://www.effectivealtruism.org/ea-global/faq
Well yes, but actually no...
I think there's definitely a clear two-level distinction going on here, where EAGx is for people early on in the EA-conveyor-belt, and once they've fully internalised and working on impact that they can move onto EAG. Furthermore, I don't think this distinction is properly internalised by the community, partly because it doesn't actually line up with all the facts. Many people rejected from EA Global "have a solid understanding of the core ideas of EA and who are taking significant actions based on those ideas", and are thus understandably upset when their application is rejected.
Making the distinction between the two much more clear in branding would make the distinction and the stakes more clear. I also think that having the big event for all EAs should be the biggest ones from a community building perspective! While the more regional, local ones might make more sense for network events for people working in the same field in similar geographical areas. But that's currently the other way around.
Tl;dr: I still don't think the EA Global/EAGx distinction is getting at what Scott's pointing out in the quote
But the proposed access free EAG would result in something with the vibe of an EAGx.
EAG career conference for folks already working in high impact areas.
EAGx community conference for everyone.
Is an EAG so different from an EAGx that we need a single huge EAG somewhere, where everyone can attend? And wouldn't this undermine the distinction?
Which need is not addressed in an EAGx?