<p>This is mainly for engineering.
I've heard from multiple people that some grad schools mainly have their department's committee decide who gets in, while others have told me that some schools have it so that the prof you want to work with is the one that mainly decides this.
The people who told me about the latter also mentions that if that committee doesn't want to admit the applicant, then there's nothing the professor the applicant wanted to work with can do about that.</p>
<p>Does this vary from school to school? I thought the prof had the most say?</p>
<p>It does vary from department to department, but there is a typical pattern. A typical admissions process involves two rounds:</p>
<p>In the first round (the “down-select”), a committee sorts through the giant stack of applications and tries to winnow it down to a reasonable number. How they do this will vary a bit, but it usually focuses on easily comparable and identifiable things - GPA, GRE, identification of a couple of potential advisors, things like that. At many schools it is so simplistic that some of it is done by secretarial staff rather than professors - you don’t need a PhD to get rid of anyone with a <3.0 GPA (or whatever cutoff they are using). Regardless, the goal is to create a pool large enough to have lots of good prospects but small enough for all the remaining applications to get some in-depth study. All of these applicants are worthy of admission, even though most of them will not be admitted.</p>
<p>In the second round (the “up-select”) professors and administrators who have spots to fill sort through the surviving applicants and figure out who they want to admit. How they pick people depends both on the spot and on the person doing the picking. Fellowship recipients and unfunded admits (both a small percentage of the admit pool at most schools) are typically picked by the committee or some designee based on the same characteristics that got them through the first round - GPA, GRE, maybe a few other small items. TA recipients are typically picked by whoever heads the courses in question, based on how well prepared they are to teach the courses and whether or not they would make good researchers in that area (since your TA advisor is likely to be your thesis advisor as well!). RA recipients are typically chosen based on their research preparation as told by their coursework, research experience, and letters of recommendation. Any of these people can and will apply additional or just plain different criteria - I know a Chinese professor who exclusively admits Chinese grad students to his group, a male professor who preferentially admits women, professors who favor grads from specific schools, etc. But in this round, for almost everyone, the level of preparation is what gets individual professors to look at you and the letters of recommendation finish the decision.</p>
<p>As to who has the most say… well, it varies between departments and professors. In some departments that first round is set in stone, no matter what. In other departments the first round is meant to be just a convenience, allowing professors to pick first round rejectees provided they still meet basic department criteria - you might need a 3.4 GPA to make it past the first round, but the department might only enforce a 3.0 minimum if a professor really wants you. And all of this is still subject to internal politics. A new or junior professor may want or need to toe the line while a senior professor may be allowed a lot more latitude.</p>
<p>Does this help?</p>