<p>Interesteddad-Thanks for your thoughtful analysis. But here is my question: </p>
<p>If they wanted 9 week grade reports on all ED applicants, why do you think they did not just ask for these reports initially in the application instructions? Some school do. Seems like they are scrambling now to make all these telephone calls to the GCs.</p>
<p>What do you think their rationale was, from an admission process point of view, for waiting to make these calls to (some of) the GC's, rather than asking for the grade reports upfront? Thanks</p>
<p>As soon as an application is stamped "accepted", there is a checklist of clerical paperwork stuff that has to be done and that one of the items on the checklist is to call or write the the high school to request copies of senior year grade reports. Getting those is standard operating procedure for accepted students.</p>
<p>Also, we don't really know how many "wink, wink: I can't tell you, but I think it's looking good" conversations take place between admissions officers and high school guidance counselors. Just because a GC tells a student the college contacted the school to send a grade report doesn't mean that the GC is relaying the entire conversation.</p>
<p>In other cases, the adcoms may be looking for ammunition to support a candidate or simply confirmation that a student is holding up OK under the heavy senior year AP load.</p>
<p>There are so many possible explanations that I really wouldn't try to read anything definitive into it.</p>
<p>speculative or not, you are amazing interesteddad. how do you know that there is a checklist? much less what's on it. how do you have access to the sops? does every school on this forum have someone like you on their boards? if not, they should.</p>
<p>Oh, I don't know what's on the checklist. But, it's just common sense. Prepare the acceptance letters. Notify the financial aid office, create an accepted student's file, do whatever it is that colleges do to let other schools know that an accepted ED applicant is off the market, etc. </p>
<p>The school is closed over Thanksgiving and letters have to be mailed by the 12th or so. It only makes sense that they would start with the clerical processing as soon as each decision is made. </p>
<p>From reading the Gatekeepers, it is obvious that, in any given pile of applications, some are easy to accept, some are easy to reject, and the majority go to the next step where there has to be some further discussion.</p>
<p>My hunch is that a meeting takes place early on in the process where the Admissions Dean asks all the readers if they have any "auto-admits". They all hand him their obvious acceptances, he reads the files, confirms the recommendations, and those go into the accepted pile. Those are easy meetings. Then, they move on to the harder work -- deciding between a bunch of really good applicants.</p>
<p>Each admissions counselor at Swarthmore only had, on average, two or three dozen ED apps to review from his or her region. So, they have a pretty good idea after the first week which ones are going to sail through and which ones they'll have to go to bat for and sell in committee.</p>
<p>I think that every applicant should go into the process expecting they'll be one of the majority that has to be sold in committee.</p>
<p>Glad you have faith in me ID! I assume that they just call everyone's highschool for 9wk grades. As I said before at my highschool its a requirement for the GC to notify and ask the student for permission before they send in parts of his/her transcript. The notification probably isn't necessary at every highschool so your GC may have already sent in your grades. I think I'm qualified to go to swarthmore, even if i have "pedestrian" SAT scores. But I'm realistic and seriously doubt I'm an "auto-admit" (that would be awesome though, lol) Hopefully come the 15th I'll get an acceptance letter. Until then I'm trying to not dwell on the decision. Its out of my hands now anyway. Good luck to everyone!</p>
<p>So I talked to my GC today (I had to hand in my list of other schools they need to send my transcript out to, the deadline was today if any schools had Jan 1 deadlines for RD), and she asked when I was hearing from Swat, because she wouldn't mail anything unless I didn't get in. I told her that they're sending out the decisions today, and she told me to keep her posted (was I not going to tell her?) but didn't mention that they'd called for my MP grades, or anything remotely like it...I hope I wasn't an easy write-off :-/</p>
<p>yea mine didn't give me any indication that they asked for anything either...although i am not really taking any high school courses, so i doubt they would have asked her. my college classes aren't over til after decisions are mailed, so those grades can't help/hurt me unless i'm defered.</p>
<p>Dude, I officially feel super special. In fairness, a little has changed since my stats post: I dropped AP Spanish for Journalism (school newspaper) and my SATs were okay, but not as good as my PSATs (I got a 660M/760CR/790W). Though, I am now a national merit semi-finalist (according to my GC, my score was the 4th highest in the state, but I don't exactly trust him to be perfectly accurate on that). But thanks to ID and everyone else for the super kind words, I feel heartened and extremely flattered.</p>