This is a great achievement. I'm interested to know why you didn't just accept anyone who was willing to pay the fee, as some other training institutions do. Was it limited to 20 due to your teaching resources on hand?
Not speaking for Shereef...but, he mentions that the spring cohort was incredibly motivated. Accepting anyone willing to pay the fee would really take away from the power of the program. I don't know if that was Shereef's plan, but the spring class motivated themselves and each other. It was an infectious environment to be around others who were determined to bang their head against the wall until they broke through. If the class was not pre-filtered for these qualities - it would have been a very different atmosphere.