<p>1-Columbia quickly looks at the scores of an application, makes a rejection pile, acceptance pile and make a pile for the in betweens...those are the ones that they spend time looking at.</p>
<p>I thought of this:</p>
<p>2-Columbia makes a strong and weak pile of applicants (based on grades). They accept the best of the strong. They accept the best of the weak. The reason why they need some weak is that a college can't have all strong applicants. </p>
<p>that is scary and gives me goosebumps and makes me want to crawl under my covers and never come out. i would undoubtedly be in the “weak” pile… lets hope that if it is option 2, i’m the best of the weak. hah</p>
<p>@pbr: I read before that it’s a law or something (?) Columbia has to diversify. It can’t accept all geniuses. If you read past Decision threads a some weak kids are accepted.</p>
<p>@College: According to your stats, you would be in the strong ;)</p>
<p>This thread is lulz. The whole point of a holistic admissions process is that grades are only part of the story. But at a place like Columbia: if not the grades, then other things have to be outstanding. Columbia isn’t going to diversify by accepting “weak” candidates – it just might accept someone based on their unique talents, etc. instead of their grades.</p>
<p>lol…the process below is for “normal” applicants (non-recruited athlete, no millionaire contributer, no obama’s daughter, etc. = mostly everyone)</p>
<p>1) the regional officer compiles all the applicants from the area, and makes a note of each one (based on grades, ec. etc.) and writes a brief summary, making sure to note the strong ones</p>
<p>2) all the applications makes trip up to new york city to be reviewed by a committee. the committee reads over the individual files, and discuss each individual. there are votes to accept, reject, or waitlist.</p>
<p>3) all the accepted/rejected are reviewed by the head person, who mostly approves the decisions, but in rare cases may think a decision was made too rashly and sends it back for committee to review again</p>
<p>there definitely not gonna make way to accept weak ppl just because they “need weak applicants.” </p>
<p>the weak academically accepted applicants all have something that makes up for their lack of intellectual potential; f.x, recruited athlete, nationally ranked debater, etc.</p>
<p>but yeah, its scary. but i guess it also makes the possiblity of them making a mistake a little smaller…and more opportunities for us to impress them (if its just one person deciding everything, its just gonna be his personal bias all the way haha)</p>
<p>this is kind of silly. as photographer pointed out, columbia uses a holistic admissions process, meaning that they won’t eliminate you simply because of grades. furthermore, columbia explicitly guarantees on its website that no decision on any single application is made before it has been read in its entirety by at least two readers (i’d be inclined to believe them). however, as photographer also points out, the process is only so holistic. either grades need to be excellent, or the rest of the application has be exceptional (preferably both). </p>
<p>however, all that speaks more to what columbia expects from its applicants than the technical aspects of the process. silence, i’m going to guess that neither of your initial suggestions are correct. it seems totally bizarre that columbia would be legally required to diversify their class by including weaker candidates in it as well. more likely is that those accepted students who superficially appear weak had some important but less obvious redeeming quality (excellent essay, superb recs, legacy, etc.). with columbia’s guarantee of two readers in mind, and having read a bit of how Penn and MIT handle applications, I suggest the following as a possible system:</p>
<p>each application has two primary readers whose job it is to assess the overall strength or weakness of the application. weak applications are eliminated immediately. strong applications move on in the process. the primary readers, after eliminating the weaker applications, create summaries of the strengths and weaknesses of each strong application, preparing it for consideration by committee. the final committee reads these summaries, and possibly then the entire application, and makes final decisions. </p>
<p>that could be totally off. i find the whole process really interesting even outside my personal investment in it, and i’d love to learn more if there’s anyone out there with more concrete, specific knowledge of how this thing works.</p>
<p>ok, i wrote that before i saw collegeftw’s thing. is all that information verified/definitely factual? most of it makes sense and is very close to what i guessed, but it doesn’t make much sense to me that each decision would be reviewed by a singular “head person” considering the immense number of applications.</p>
<p>i know. i hope i didn’t sound confrontational or anything. as i said, i’m just guessing that what you said is probably not how it works, but i know no more than you do, so it could be me who’s completely wrong.</p>
<p>On second thought: that’s some serious specificity, College. Care to share what makes you believe it true? (Though it sounds totally reasonable).</p>
<p>hey axel,
that was long…but well written! lol</p>
<p>yeah, theres no single “head” person. however, there is a “head” of admissions person who does the ultimate accept/reject/waitlist…like </p>
<p>1) if the regional officer thinks ur SOOOO strong (like 2400, valedictorian, still pres of clubs and stuff) then she/he bypasses your application’s trip to the committee and sends it straight to the head person and is like here accept this person. the head, if he/she agrees, will accept, and ur in; if she/he thinks the regional officer was too optimistic, then he/she sends the application to the committee</p>
<p>2)after teh committee has made their decisions on all the applicants, the head goes through it one by one (quickly, like most of the time just reads the summary card that takes like <1 minute), and 90-95 % of the time will agree with the committee’s decision…but if the head doesn’t, he/she will send that particular application back to the committee to review. if they still disagree…idk what goes on from there lol</p>