<p>just curious since there are several different schools. if you are applying to a specific school, does your application go straight to that school's admission committee? </p>
<p>Yes, each school has its own admissions committee. </p>
<p>so then wat is the point of regional adcoms?</p>
<p>Well I think that within each college’s admission committee, each admission officer is assigned a particular region.</p>
<p>but if you look on the cornell website, there is one regional rep for each region, and it doesn’t specify what school.</p>
<p>I remember reading The Gatekeepers, a book about highly selective college admissions, and this is what it said about Cornell (I believe I may have posted a variant of this):</p>
<p>There are two readers assigned to each application. One’s the regional admissions representative and the other’s a professor or other faculty figure in the stated college of interest–this is so that the former can gauge the strength of the application compared to those of others’ nearby and the latter can see if he or she would be a good fit. If both say yes then they’re in, if both say no then they’re out, and if it’s a tie then the application is forwarded to a committee for further review. Keep in mind that this book was published over ten years ago and actually focused mostly on Wesleyan, so I can’t confirm the veracity of any of these statements. It does a bit flippant and far-fetched to me, but it would elucidate the need for regional representatives. </p>
<p>From my own experience communicating with CALS admissions as an ED applicant and later a GT, there seems to be a “selection committee” in place that sifts through all these applications, suggesting that they’re actually looked at by several people at once. I imagine that things like essays, extracurriculars, and recommendations would be discussed in these meetings and that a voting system decides who gets the big envelope and who gets the boot.</p>
<p>It could be a mixture of both, or none at all. We’ll probably never know for sure, haha. Best of luck! </p>
<p>I went to the CAS information session this summer, and the lady mentioned a similar thing with a reader (it sounded like herself but probably not after reading this) and a faculty member.</p>