<p>Say, hypothetically of course, that (obviously) more than one student from the same high school are applying to the same college. But Student A sent in his application before Student B. Does this guarantee that Student A's application will be reviewed first?</p>
<p>Now imagine that Student A has been accepted. When the admissions officer arrives at Student B's application, s/he realizes they like Student B better than Student A, but doesn't want to accept 2 students from the same high school. Is it possible that s/he goes back and reject Student A's application in order to accept Student B's?</p>
<p>I obviously don't quite understand the acceptance procedure for applications...maybe if someone could explain it...</p>
<p>Colleges are reading thousands of apps so each applicant is compared to a very large pool. Your hypothetical situation is very unlikely to ever happen. Plus, it’s foolish to have quotas per high school. If the college thinks the individual applicants are worthy, they’ll offer admission. If not, then not. Two years ago, my HYP alma mater offered 4 accepts to my local HS – a statistical abnormality for sure. It just happened to be four superstar applicants.</p>
<p>Unless a school has rolling admissions, the fact that A submitted his application before B is irrelevant. It does not guarantee that A’s application will be reviewed first.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, yes, decisions can be reversed up until the point at which letters are sent out(though I doubt someone will be rejected on the basis you described in your post). The committee might put an app in the accept pile, but then the dean of admissions might look at it again and move it to the defer pile. Or they’ll put someone in the accept pile, and then 30 minutes later someone will bring up a strong argument against accepting that kid, and then the committee will decide to move him to the defer pile.</p>
<p>Read any book about admissions, such as “The Gatekeepers” and you’ll see there’s plenty of kids who were “in” to a college for a few hours or days until they had to thin out the stack of acceptances. They are never told, of course.</p>