Application Reviewers: Who Are They?

Transfer Students UC Transfers
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<p>So I started doing a little basic math (with some heavy rounding). </p>

<p>Some assumptions:
-UCLA had 80,000 applicants this year.
-There are about 60 working days from February-April (12 weeks, 5 days per week).
-The maximum reasonable rate at which a reviewer could go through applications is 10 per hour. That's one every six minutes.
-Each application must be reviewed by at least 3 people.</p>

<p>On average, 1,333 applications must be reviewed on each of the sixty days. One reviewer can get through, at best, 80 applications per day. So, at least 17 readers are needed. Since three readers must read each application, we're to roughly 50 total readers, working full-time, for three months.</p>

<p>I see two possibilities. Either there are roughly 50 people who work full-time reviewing applications for three months, or there are a larger number who work part-time. </p>

<p>If the first possibility, who are they? Either UC pays people year-round even though they're only needed for 1/4 of the year, or they're pulled from other departments (could professors drop everything for three months?), or they're hiring temps. All three have problems.</p>

<p>If the second possibility, we get to problems of consistency. If you pulled reviewers from other departments, making them work one day a week on reviewing applications, we're looking at 250 or more total reviewers. As the number of reviewers increases, consistency between them decreases. Using three reviewers per application helps check that, but the problem still exists.</p>

<p>Anyway, I'm not really asking anything here, I just thought all this was interesting. Reviewing 80,000 applications is not easy. I'd personally feel better if there were only 25 or so well-trained reviewers who could spend 10 minutes on each application. Of course, that would require 40 weeks to get through all 80,000.</p>

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<p>I know a reviewer personally. He works in admissions year round and during this time of year they are reviewing applications. He mostly works with the freshman apps, although he did say they occasionally pull freshman app reviews in to work on the transfer apps. He described it as sitting in a jail cell for 8 hours a day with a bunch of miserable people. </p>

<p>I’m not sure if all of the employees are full timers in the admissions office, although that does make sense to me.</p>

<p>Source: I did a week long summer program at UCLA where we were lucky enough to have an admissions rep staying with us at the dorms. So I picked his brain quiet a bit.</p>

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<p>Interesting post Nick. I would assume a combination of both full-time admissions staff and part-timers consisting of faculty and professional reviewers (if such a thing exists). Remember that for some majors, like Communication Studies, applications are primarily reviewed by department faculty. </p>

<p>Since there are a large number of applicants, the most logical way to do it would be to admit based on a tiered system. This way you can also apply a holistic review to applicants on the bubble.</p>

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<p>I heard that Alumnis would sometimes review applications.</p>

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<p>I think they would have a way to eliminate certain applicants to certain impacted majors right away based on some sort of secret GPA cutoff or something. Also there is a good portion of students each year who apply without satisfying all the requirements for the one major they are allowed to apply for hoping they might still have a chance and this automatically eliminates them from the applicant pool. I heard from a Berkeley rep something about how Berkeley’s Haas School of Business Business Administration major’s 6% acceptance rate is more like 20% if you ignore all of those students who get denied just because they didn’t satisfy some sort of requirement. It would be a waste of time and resources if UCLA actually went through all 80,000 applicants.</p>

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<p>@ella89</p>

<p>Did he said what he was doing for the other 9 months of the year? Admissions certainly has some work, but not as much during application season.</p>

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<p>They probably work in doing outreach programs and trying to reach prospective students.</p>

<p>Below I posted the selection process for UCLA which also is stated word for word in Berkeley’s site. It is for freshman admissions but I cannot see it being much different from transfer admissions.

As you can see two readers read the application.</p>

<p>Also there is this video [YouTube</a> - UC Berkeley Undergraduate Admissions](<a href=“http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mjGI2e4GG9E]YouTube”>http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mjGI2e4GG9E) which from 1:40-2:10 you see admission officers sitting down and discussing a particular application.</p>

<p>Even though most schools state they review “holistically” this does not take hours. They most likely look at applications within a time frame of most likely minutes.</p>

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<p>My English prof. once told my class, during a lecture about orginality, that she reviewed UC personal statements. Although, I don’t recall her saying anything about application reviewing, just statements. So perhaps, it’s broken up into groups or something of that nature. Besides, think about how crap it would be if one of those “reviewers” were to be having a bad day and happens to come across your application with borderline gpa. That would suck! So I doubt it just one person that does a single application.</p>

<p>She did say, however, that it was in some sort of enclosed room with many long tables, and also mentioned how boring it got after hours of reading statements (all containing the same material pretty much). Hence, she used it in her lecture about being orginal.</p>

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<p>I believe that some of the campuses do read personal statements, but don’t have a holistic review process. Different readers look at the different parts–one does academics, one reads the personal statements, etc., each of which assigns a score for that section. </p>

<p>The holistic process involves each reviewer reading the full application, and assigning a score in consideration of all its elements.</p>

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<p>Right but I bet the process is very quick. I highly doubt they spend a significant amount of time on every application. In addition, I also agree with @walleats. The Haas example is very pertinent. I assume they check applications and if they do not meet the requirements those are automatically rejected without even bringing them into consideration.</p>

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<p>No, I agree. My estimates in the OP figured 6 minutes per application. That still requires a lot of time. The automatic disqualifications theory makes sense, though.</p>

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<p>My bad. I didn’t see the reference to the 6 minutes. I guess we shall never know.</p>

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<p>Like I said they may also have a tier. For example they may have a pile of applicants that are essentially auto-admit or auto-denied based on any number of criteria. They may spend the bulk of their time on the middle.</p>

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<p>@nick… Yeah outreach programs mostly. He also worked for CCCP and was a visiting counselor at west LA (he went there and told URM about programs). </p>

<p>He also said that they spend less than ten minutes on an app.</p>

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<p>When I applied as a freshman I sincerely doubt any UC’s but UCLA actually went past skimming my personal statements. </p>

<p>I had a 2190 SAT but a **** (~3.0) GPA because of mitigating circumstances that I explained in my essays. UCLA was the only university to send me a supplemental form to help me better explain myself. They ended up rejecting me, which is fair enough, at least I knew they had seen my personal statement and realized that my situation was more complicated that most people’s.</p>

<p>As for the other UC’s, I applied to all but Merced and Riverside. Rejected by all. I honestly think they don’t have time to consider anyone on an individual basis much. The lower tier UC’s probably go: GPA? check. SAT? check. Does their personal statement sound like the applicant is literate? check. Admitted/Denied.</p>

<p>That’s for freshman admission of course, but I’m sure the transfer situation isn’t too much different, they probably check for requirements instead of SAT etc…</p>

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<p>At least for transfer admissions, most of the lower tier UCs don’t even read the personal statements. I think only UCLA, Cal, UCSB, and UCI consider them in the decision process.</p>

<p>I don’t understand why it takes non-holistic UCs as long to finish the decisions as it takes UCLA and Berkeley. Consider Davis, for instance. The school doesn’t read personal statements, has a low TAG GPA requirement, and 20,000 fewer applications than UCLA, but reports during mid-April.</p>

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<p>^This wait is really getting to you huh? :-)</p>

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<p>Ha, just a bit. It’s not as bad during the week when I have work to distract me. Weekends suck.</p>

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<p>^I feel you. The sitting and waiting can drive one insane. That’s why I wish I had gotten into UCI on the first batch, it’s nice to know you have one in your pocket.</p>