Unpopular opinion here. The value of startupschool (as a previous graduate) is the individual attention we got from a hand selected instructor. I know yc screwed up with the emails, and their response was to please those that they have misled, accidentally of course. But I think they also devalued the class. It's gonna be much harder to offer the quality attention of the past. I think the right thing they should have…
You make a good point about withstanding rejection. But from the discussions that I overheard this afternoon, part of the motivation is that it's what the YC partners wanted to do anyway. That is, it's not only about making people feel better (though we certainly do want that), but also about realizing the original vision. I think Adora is planning to write a blog post about this.
If it works out, then the mistake will turn out to have been more of a catalyst than a mistake, which would be a good outcome. Hopefully people will feel that way in the end.