The Cohort Is Small On Purpose
25,000 applications is not the achievement. It is the denominator.
The intake is 25. That is roughly 1 place for every 1,000 people who ask, and the ratio is not a filter designed to look selective. It is the largest number of people who can sit inside one operating team and still have something real to do.
What the ratio buys
A cohort of 25 can be split into 5 working groups of 5, and every group can be given a live client, a deadline and a budget. That is the whole structure. There are no lectures to size for, no lecture hall, no queue for a tutor's attention.
Stretch the same room to 250 and the first thing to go is the client. The second is the deadline. What is left is a curriculum, and a curriculum is the thing the programme exists to avoid.
210 alumni, 19 countries
The alumni number is 210 across 19 countries. Small enough that a graduate can be placed by name rather than by cohort year.
That matters for 1 reason. The value of finishing is not the certificate, it is the set of people who can say what you built and how. 210 people who have each shipped inside an operating team is a working network. 2,000 who watched the same 12 modules is a mailing list.
The cost of the small number
A 1-in-1,000 ratio means the answer is usually no, and it means the answer arrives after a real read rather than a score.
A reader spends 2 to 4 minutes on a first pass, and 3 to 5 artefacts with a working link and a date move a file forward. That is the same arithmetic at the door as inside the programme. It does not get easier once someone is in, it just moves from the application to the work.
The probability that a strong candidate is declined for reasons unrelated to ability is not zero. With 25 seats it is unavoidable, and pretending otherwise would be the dishonest version of this paragraph.
What the small number is for
The programme is not trying to teach 25,000 people. It is trying to produce 25 people a cohort who can be handed something broken and return it working, and then be placed on the strength of that.
25,000 is the funnel. 25 is the product.