<p>I was going through the Duke site and I read that each admissions officer was responsible for a geographic region. So I was wondering, does this mean our applications are read by region (by the admissions officer assigned to the region)?</p>
<p>Of course, this is before committee, where a whole group of adcoms discuss the application (assuming Duke does committee).</p>
<p>Thanks!</p>
<p>If I recall correctly, my regional admissions officer told me that she’d be the first one to read my application. Not entirely sure though.</p>
<p>Yeah I guess that makes sense. Sorta sucks that you’re competing within your region though :/</p>
<p>And apparently, committee is also by region (article from two years ago):
[Application</a> increase overwhelms review system | The Chronicle](<a href=“http://dukechronicle.com/article/application-increase-overwhelms-review-system]Application”>Application increase overwhelms review system - The Chronicle)</p>
<p>Oh dang…they use a rating system? That’s a bit…disconcerting</p>
<p>^I’m not sure why it’s disconcerting. No matter how holistic the approach is to evaluating applicants, some sort of ranking must be established to differentiate one from the other based on a single metric or criterion. A numerical system is the best, most objective way of doing it and the rating system is probably their compromise on how to look at the whole application and distill it into one number. I’m sure this approach is widely used at other places too.</p>