I get the "holistic" admissions concept but do many schools "pre-screen" with GPA and ACT/SAT?

Applying to College
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Yes, I agree this is really something they have long done in some form, and AI and such may be merely speeding up the process, not fundamentally changing it.

I was actually interested to see how much manual data entry was involved at the beginning of that Holy Cross video. That sure seems like the sort of thing that an AI or such could potentially take over.

I think it gets interesting if the AI is also doing a lot of work in terms of “norming” academic qualifications between different high schools. That could potentially be more fair, although there have been some not so great results in broadly similar situations where it seems like AIs have sometimes “learned” various biases we would consider unfair.

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what if someone like me has good test score- SAT 1580, 7 AP all 5s except one 4, but got 3.83 unweighted and 4.14 weighted, because I got B+ on Spanish in both 9th and 10th grade, and B on history in 9th grade (due to a family member passed away because of covid and I had to remote from home one month longer than everyone else). In this case, if my GPA does not meet AO’s standard but my SAT met, will my case directly be thrawn to the trash can?

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Assuming the college is not test blind, usually your grades and your test scores would be evaluated together, without a strict independent requirement for one or the other.

You will also have an opportunity to briefly explain how COVID affected you, which colleges can then take into account however they would like.

But since we don’t really know how colleges will deal with these issues this cycle, my recommendation would be to make sure you apply to a couple likely schools where your grades without any accommodation would be good enough for admission.

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Please do not explain Bs on your transcript. I promise that you have better things to write about.

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You’re not what they’re talking about. They’re talking about a Math 580 Sat score applying to MIT or a kid with a 3.0 who wants to get into their state’s competitive flagship. And even then there’d be an accelerated human review just to make sure.

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Using AI for quantitative traits is very easy. Colleges regularly pile applications into various categories. Cutoffs to make the workload easier is a no brainer for me. A school like Yale could very easily make the cut at 1500/34 and 3.4 GPA along with 8 APs or some such. Then they can reach back into those cut to meet institutional priorities, if necessary.
Also, U Chicago has been test optional for many years. I am sure they have a fairly efficient process in place to weed out applicants that are less qualified.

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I worked as an external reader for a T50 university. External readers reviewed applications and assigned a ranking based on how well the applicant’s application met the desired criteria of each major/school of major. There were a minimum of 2 external readers per file. This stage of review happened prior to the full time AOs receiving the file, and in some instances acted as a preliminary screening tool.

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Good info. To me, external readers function the same as AOs, enabling apps to have more trained human eyes on them, not less (like AI).

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I think the “or some such” part of that is the tricky bit, since there are so many different curriculum and grading systems, schools have different student populations, and so on. That is where experienced AOs have to do real work in deciding how to compare results from different systems/schools, which presumably you need to do in order to implement any sort of meaningful academic screen.

And I am not saying AI can’t be trained to take over more of that. But I do know it is something AOs think is not easily reduced to a simple formula.

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They can’t make a cut on test scores, when they are test score optional.

Nor can they make a cut on number of APs when many excellent public and private schools don’t have APs at all, or limit the number students can take.

They could make a cut on GPA (recalculated uw in core courses only), but can’t do that without looking at rigor (which AI can’t do, maybe ever, as each high school has it’s own unique course offerings and policies).

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We have a friend who has been the president of two universities. According to her, no matter what the admissions department of a school says about having an “holistic review process” they all make initial cuts based on a combination of standardized test scores and GPA. If you don’t make the initial cut they do not look at anything else in your application. This makes sense, especially for top ranked schools that receive far more applications than seats. There simply is not time to review the entire application from every prospective student, especially for schools that are requiring multiple supplemental essays.

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This is just not accurate, based on the experience of some who have already posted on this thread.

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I don’t know what to tell you. That was my friend’s report based on her years in university administration and speaking with other academics at conferences, etc.

I see several posts where either schools claim to have a “holistic approach”, or schools have a reader go back and review “holistically” the applications that failed the initial GPA cut, but my point is that what schools claim, and what actually happens can be very different things. (Did I miss a post from a college administrator or AO who says that schools read every piece of paper in every application?) I doubt highly that the one reader who is going back to look at the applications that did not make the initial cut is reading every essay and recommendation for every student (maybe they are looking for a linebacker that the football team desperately needs).

Maybe we are talking semantics here. To me, the “holistic review” includes reading everything in the student’s package, including essays, recommendations, interviewer recommendations, etc. Maybe some schools think that skimming applications that did not make the GPA cut looking for something they need - an athlete, trombone player, kid from Idaho, etc. - passes as an “holistic review”.

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As an external reader did you read everything - essays, recommendations, etc. - in their entirety for every student regardless of their GPA and/or test scores?

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Yeah, there is “do not look at anything else in your application”, and there is “only quickly look at the rest of your application.”

There is plenty of evidence a lot of holistic review colleges are doing some version of the latter, and it is plausible a higher percentage of applications would be getting onto such a “fast track” as the application counts skyrocket.

And while it is always possible they are all lying and actually doing the former–I tend not to credit such widespread conspiracies being sustainable.

But we already saw in this thread how this line can get blurred. Nervous applicants are worried about not having good enough academic qualifications and as a result having their application thrown in the trash. And as described, that may not happen.

However, while the case above is not a good example of this because it would probably pass most if not all academic screens, in cases where it does happen, I am not sure being fast-tracked instead is going to be all that comforting. Like, I don’t know how many applications like that get redirected to longer review after the quick review. But if this is going to help these colleges be efficient with review time, it can’t be many. Indeed, it necessarily has to be a much lower percentage than their overall admit percentage.

So if an AO says otherwise, I doubt they are secretly throwing them in the trash, or that the rest of the application isn’t looked at, or so on. But, it is likely true the applicant has no practical chance at that point unless there is something truly extraordinary about their application that will quickly stand out.

But . . . this is not a surprise, right? Regardless of the process they use, if you are unhooked and they think you are below their normal academic standards for admission, it is going to take something extraordinary to change the outcome. Again, I think the point is these colleges just need a faster route to getting there, but they really are not changing their fundamental standards.

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That’s a different claim from saying, “If you don’t make the initial cut they do not look at anything else in your application.”

Exactly what else they look at, for how long, in these “fast track” processes probably varies a lot by college.

But I do know if you read a lot of stuff, you tend to develop a lot of different reading speeds you can use in different contexts. So to me, it is not necessarily the most important question whether you did or did not “read” something. The better question is sometimes how much time did you spend reading it.

And so a person with some fast reading speeds available might well “read” everything in an application–in some sense. And also be done in like a minute.

My own personal impression is that it might be more open-ended than that. Like, maybe you had an extraordinary personal or family trauma in high school. Maybe you are an Olympian in a non-recruited sport. Maybe something about your essay caused the reader to slow down and then they absolutely loved it. And so on.

From what I have heard, all this doesn’t mean the applicant is going to get admitted. They just get kicked back from the “fast track” to the “normal track”. So while that has to be a low enough percentage occurrence to make this work, it doesn’t necessarily have to be anything definitive.

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Yes. We were specifically trained to look at every piece–you never know where the “special circumstance” or hidden talent will be expressed in an application.

Now, we were expected to read a minimum of 5 applications per hour so the amount of time you could linger on an application was limited and by necessity some pieces were evaluated in greater depth than others.

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was just told this summer by an AO that she spends 8m/app as an experienced AO, which comes to 7app/hour, ~50app/day per reader.

** given some schools get 50,000+ apps, that’s 1,000 reader days (not counting the committee discussion time), and 2,000 reader days if they are all read by two AOs/readers.

** If the admissions office has 15 AOs/readers, reading alone would be 4+ months of full time work

** the math demonstrates why most selective schools end up using external readers in the process

** for other schools where cost is a constraint, the use of AI can significantly reduce human labor and the cost of processing admission

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Ypu have to remember applications aren’t in a pile and people just grab a bunch, then more when they’re done with the first bunch.
They’re sorted out by region - reps that know the High schools, their strength, etc. And may have met with students during fairs, etc.
You also have codes (can be color coded or any indication): dean’s interest, FGLI, recruited athlete, legacy, etc.
Reading is always “in context”: if the highest math offered is precalculus and only 9 in the class of 37 took it (real situation) you’re not evaluating the rigor like the student is at Bronx Science. If the school’s ACT average is 17 and a kid scores 28, it could be enough even if your average is 33 - and the kid whose HS’ s median Act is 27 will not have that 28 evaluated the same at all.
It doesn’t mean there aren’t cut offs but there’s nuance. Even the best math student at a HS that only scores 580 Math on the SAT is not getting into MIT. However a 700 will be looked at differently depending on the school.

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irrespective of what’s available at a particular high school in terms of difficulty, a 700 SAT math score has less than 1% chance of getting admitted when the school average is circa 780 and the SAT/ACT are mandatory. Holistic evaluation & optional testing do not take away the fact that SAT/ACT provide an objective benchmark for comparing candidates, and the schools still want the best diverse body of students

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