Some Math for Those That Survive

I have a good group of students that are considered Instructor-In-Training or Instructor in my school. Not including myself as the head instructor, there are a group of 6 with 3 that have been around since the late 1980's. I thought I would do a quick calculation to figure out how many people have come through over the years.

1. To begin with, I am estimating that 1 of 5 senior students actually stay to reach the level of Instructor-in-Training. This means there were 30 senior students to generate the 6 that are with me today.
2. Only about half of regular students stay to become senior students. So 60 regular students.
3. About half of the people that actually join stay long enough to become a regular student. That means 120 people joined.
   
4. Only about 10% of the people that come in for a trial class actually join the class. This seems low but it is probably accurate based on the fact that we do not run every day and normally recommend that potential students try other schools before deciding on joining. So that would mean about 1200 students have been through our classes at some point over the years.
5. We had classes in a University for about 7 years and during those years, we definitely can add about 30 students a year who joined but did not return the following year after returning from summer vacations. So add another 210 students to get a total of 1410 students to get to the 6 that have made it through.
   
6. I will also add 2 major relocations where we started over with new students in another city (although there are a few students that just seem to relocate to whatever city the school is in) and the number is actually higher.
   

Teaching Kung Fu in a non-commercial style with no long term contracts is definitely a disadvantage as far as retention but my thinking over the years has always to train a smaller group of dedicated students instead of a large group of students that felt obligated to be there because they already paid. Congratulations to those that have made it through. I know there are others in the current group that will join the ranks over time.