30,000 applicants: how do they even begin?

Applying to College
1

<p>I just read that lots of the 'prestige' schools like harvard,stanford etc received 30,000 applicants this year.
how does the admissions committee ever get started? if they cut by numbers they miss the ones they want for different kinds of diversity like homeless person from a poorer state etc. maybe they have a staff which enters data like zipcode,stats, awards ,sports in a database and they can slice and dice that way?
no way can they read 30,000 essays!</p>

2

<p>

they can, they do, and they will. </p>

<p><a href=“http://dl.dropbox.com/u/17525393/Admission%20Data.xls[/url]”>http://dl.dropbox.com/u/17525393/Admission%20Data.xls&lt;/a&gt;
if that doesnt work, click the link on the first post here: <a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-admissions/1074794-admission-data-chart-ivies-stanford-mit.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-admissions/1074794-admission-data-chart-ivies-stanford-mit.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>Lots of colleges got close to or went over 30,000 this year. </p>

<p>Penn, Columbia, Brown, Duke, Harvard, Columbia, Northwestern
Princeton and Yale lag behind with smaller increases but they’re still at around 26000</p>

3

<p>I’m guessing maybe half are candidates that aren’t qualified to attend the school. It takes 30 seconds to see what the GPA, SAT scores and rank are.</p>

4

<p>^Columbia twice? ;)</p>

<p>It’s like power levels in Dragon Ball Z. It’s over…30,000!!</p>

<p>It’s a shame that MIT only gets half as much apps…</p>

5

<p>Some State schools in CA receive well over that amount. I “heard” UCLA received over 80,000 this year. </p>

<p>I am like you really wonder if all of the applications are really looked at.</p>

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<p>Some schools hire extra readers who are not adcoms. I know one who reads for an Ivy. His background is in admissions but he has another full time job. Kind of makes you feel queasy about the review process. (Or should I say MORE queasy.)</p>

7

<p>I met a reviewer for a very well ranked LAC who works part time in season, he was an alum of the college. His other job was pouring wine in a wine bar (or possibly an owner.)</p>

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<p>Most top colleges generally cite ~1/4 as the fraction of applicants who are academically unqualified.</p>

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<p>redshoes: who do they choose to be extra readers?</p>

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<p>silverturtle --do you have a citation for that? I have never heard that it is so high as 1/4. I thought it was 10% at most, though I don’t know where I got that from, just reading interviews I think.</p>

<p>nordicskichamp - often they use alum’s. Alums are in tune with the academics and vibe of the college.</p>

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<p>According to Mifune, approximately 1/2 of all applicants are competitive (different than qualified).</p>

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<p>Not one that I can link to. During information sessions, admissions officers from three different Ivy League schools (Yale was one of them; I don’t remember the other two) said that about 75% of applicants are academically qualified. </p>

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<p>Do you have a link to his reasoning? Of course, this is a bit subjective because “competitive” is unclear.</p>

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<p>“So far Duke has received 29,500 applicants for the Class of 2015.” In letter from Dick Brodhead.</p>

<p>UCLA - 81,235
UC San Diego - 70,474
UC Berkeley - 68,932
UC Santa Barbara - 63,303
UC Irvine - 63,250
UC Davis - 59,360
UC Santa Cruz - 36,632
UC Riverside - 34,290
UC Merced - 13,701</p>

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<p>they have a lot of adcoms?</p>

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<p>UCLA’s admit rate will be around the 15% if thats the case…oh my God…</p>

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<p>nordicskichamp: the reader i know is not an adcom or alum of the school for which he is reading. he has worked in admissions elsewhere.</p>

17

<p>UGH. With increasing population, do colleges gradually increase class sizes? It only seems fair… ugh…</p>

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<p>Yes but because almost all the students are from CA the student body is significantly less selective than the 15% acceptance rate would suggest. A large percentage of students at the top UC’s did not gain admission to the top 15 schools.</p>

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<p>

I don’t have the link but it’s somewhere in the Harvard 2015 thread, around page 50. I think he defines competitive as able to get in without a hook.</p>

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<p>

Not if they don’t have enough beds to fit the increases.
So until they build new dorms it wont happen. And in places like Columbia/Penn, building dorms is really not an option unless they get a large donation or something because it’s all in the city.</p>