<p>How does a common admission board decide if an incoming freshman is admitted? Is it a voting system
Between the members or one person gives the final say?</p>
<p>It’s not the same for every school, but for many schools, the applications are read by individual admissions officers and each decides whether an applicant should be ‘denied,’ ‘waitlisted,’ or ‘accepted.’ If an applicant isn’t strong enough to be a clear admit but not weak enough to be denied, THEN the application goes to a committee where it is voted upon. Some schools decide on each application as a whole though.</p>
<p>They print out the first page of all applications and stack them in a large pile. An admissions officer then takes them to the top of a staircase. He throws the stack up in the air and towards the stairs and waits until all the pages have come down. All pages that end up standing on end or teetering on the edge of a step are automatic admits. For others, starting from the top, all pages on odd numbered steps, 1,3, 5, 7, 9, etc., are admitted, all those on even numbered steps, 2, 4, 6, 8, etc., are rejected, and all pages at the bottom of the stairwell are wait-listed. This method is preferred by many colleges because it has been upheld by courts which have determined that it does not discriminate against any applicants and results in a diversified class. It also makes the rejection letter easy to write because the college can actually provide an honest, short and truly accurate answer for why you were rejected: “You were just a step away from where you needed to be.”</p>
<p>I would recommend reading “A is for Admission” by Hernandez. Get it from your public library. The author was a former Dartmouth admissions officer and there is a whole section on how the admissions process works, from when your application lands on the officer’s desk to when it gets put in one of the three decided piles.</p>
<p>Although not standard at most colleges, the method drusba described is, in fact, true. I remember reading a couple articles some time ago that stated certain colleges were stuck with a couple hundred spots remaining and couldn’t decide on whom to admit, so the ‘stair technique’ was utilized.</p>
<p>so that’s why college students seem a bit odd nowadays…</p>
<p>A large percentage of colleges are open admission or first-come-first-served community colleges, so everyone who applies is admitted, at least until the school is full.</p>
<p>Many other colleges are moderately selective state universities that admit by formula (of grades and/or rank and/or test scores). There may be different thresholds for different majors or divisions in the same college.</p>
<p>Some more selective state schools have a semi-holistic process designed to ensure consistency and repeatability. An example would be the UCs, where each application is scored by two readers according to specific criteria. If the scores differ too much from each other, a senior reader also reads and scores the application. The scored applications are then rank-ordered with the top N admitted (N may be set by division or major, and based on expected yield).</p>
<p>Private schools, particularly super-selective schools, may have different goals for their holistic admissions processes, such as “building a diverse class of interesting students”. Consistency and repeatability may be less in that if the applications were shuffled and re-evaluated, a considerably different set of acceptances may result.</p>
<p>Check out the youtube video how high schoolers imagine the college admission process. It’s worth a few laughs.</p>
<p>Holistic, top private: multiple review rounds by different folks, for all kids who make it past first cut. (First cut is the dreamers, subpar, no chance they’d make it at that school. Or some problem oddballs, kids with grossly incomplete apps, etc.) Comments by each reader, ratings. Through each round, some kids can get early deleted for major problems. In the end, it’s clear who’s liked, who’s expendable. Final round is all committee. All along, diversity and unique potential contributons the kid can make on campus flavor reviews- not just the left handed bassonist; adcoms know they need more seats filled in a dept or more gender balance in another, more this or less that. But that final point is like a customizing of the class. </p>
<p>This is why the process is so burdened. I do sometimes think that, after the really great “fits” are id’d, someone should throw their apps up the stairs. Or set a cutoff on the number of apps taken.</p>