Everyone else above explained it well, but also remember there can’t really be a GPA cut off because they actually look at applicants in the context of their respective schools. Obviously an applicant with a 3 something weighted (or less) GPA with other applicants from their schools with GPAs well above a 4.0. won’t get much attention. Albeit, this individual could be the exception because of circumstances, jaw dropping achievements, etc…this is just one point out of many
@hooverhoo :Pre-med courses in Brown is by no means easy. In one of the science courses, the test scores can run the whole gamut of 40+ to 90+ with an average of 70+. “It is a lot of works but manageable” … that is what my child told me. Have a lot fun though with a large group of friends. Pre-med is popular in Brown, quite a lot of students are working on it. (nowhere near Johns Hopkins’s extreme case – [2016 graduate] 392 neurosciences major, 80+ hehavioral biology major plus other pre-med majors)
I imagine the “first cut” out of 30K really not entirely based on stats in holistic. Otherwise, you would wonder why the range of test scores is so wide.
@TheOldTimer do you mean this thread: http://talk.qa.collegeconfidential.com/brown-university/1284648-brown-is-the-best-place-to-be-a-pre-med-p1.html 
Yes.
@hooverhoo : Since we are on the topic of someone actually picks Brown instead of Stanford, I would share a Stanford Duck Syndrome link …
http://web.stanford.edu/dept/CTL/cgi-bin/academicskillscoaching/why-does-the-duck-stop-here/
@TheOldTimer Thanks! Very interesting article I just forwarded to my wife too.
@iwannabe_Brown : I forgot to thank you for creating such a great thread on why Brown is the best place to be a pre-med. I have been lurking on CC for a long time getting some very valuable information. Learning can really pierce through the clouds of ignorance to make informed decision. My child is very happy at school with those “Happy Feet” 
I just can’t believe it’s been 6 years since I wrote it
On the “culling” point, a senior, longstanding member of the Columbia admissions office stated in front of a crowd last spring that although every app is read by at least one human, “some get 3, 10, 15 minutes”, implying strongly that a large number of the >37,000 apps Columbia now receives are winnowed out after a very quick first pass.
@DeepBlue86 : Columbia’s method totally make sense. For a candidate to bubble up to the top of 15+ elements triangle, obvious reasons must be found. Depending on the complexity of the apps, time spent to find the reasons on each app will be different.
To answer OP’s second question on music supplements, I believe only those apps which have passed the initial culling round will have any chance to be reviewed (regional AO might not have music background). Based on Yale’s 6000 final round number, I can imagine only those made to the final round will have opportunities to be reviewed by music department faculty. At that point, they just need to pick one out of three or four. Everything on the candidate files will be examined carefully, including music supplements. Of course, it isn’t news that the process isn’t entirely meritocratic.
@theoldtimer I wonder if the Amherst quote about 85% not going to committee means they were eliminated or so clearly IN that they didn’t warrant discussion?
From Amherst website:
Number of applicants: 8,406
Total number enrolled in Class of 2020: 471
Early Decision applicants: 40%
Of those admitted, percentage matriculating: 41%
15% of 8406 is about 1200. They are going to committee. Assume most of ED deferred go into RD pool.
To fill about 280 RD slots with 41% yield, they need to admit about 700.
So for Amherst, they pick slightly more than 1 out of 2 at final committee. Those files not going to committee have be thrown out. Since their pool is small, this workflow works. For Ivies, there must be more than one pass before committee. As @DeepBlue86 said, the first one will be a very fast one.
What I was asking was, if a candidate is a shoo-in, does that candidate even go to committee? Or just the ones not rejected by some earlier-applied criteria?
In other words, is committee for borderline cases with definite yeses and nos bypassing it, or for consideration of all “finalists”?
My understanding is that RD admitted must come from committee decision. There’s no backdoor. Everyone of those admitted ones is decided by final committee.
At final committee meeting, they will have a matrix based on location, race, gender, etc. to fill. Do you notice that Brown gender statistics is so inbanced that male applicants should have an advantage at RD.?
I think it’s pretty widely known that at many schools there’s at least one group of admitted students that bypasses Committee (or at worst goes through a truncated version of it), which is the recruited athletes. The coaches put them forward and if their stats are in range they get a likely letter, with the application itself almost a formality.
It would be surprising if the development cases and other VIP applicants didn’t also have a streamlined process, where the app zooms to the top of the pile and the director of admissions makes the call, probably with a small number of other senior people in the administration (particularly in development) being consulted.
Put it this way: I’m pretty sure that when Malia Obama applied to Harvard, Drew Faust was in the loop and Bill Fitzsimmons read the app personally. I doubt it was reviewed in the usual way by the admissions officer responsible for private schools in DC, compared to others from Sidwell Friends and then sent to Committee before making its way to him.
Agreed. From the book “The Battle for Room 314” – “After the preliminary votes were cast, the Admissions Committee was convened.” Those “preliminary votes” include athletes and VIP. They are not being compared with the rest of us. They are guaranteed to get “YES” votes.
@DeepBlue86 : Also, my understanding is that most of the athletes and VIP are handled at ED/EA. RD is for ordinary folks. Could you correct me if this is wrong? Thanks.
Well, I’m not an admissions officer, and I’m sure it’s different everywhere (and every year), but I believe the recruited athletes are primarily dealt with in the fall (given the constraints of the national recruiting calendar) and many of the VIPs (particularly those with family ties to a particular school, or anyone else for whom a school is a natural first choice) will also apply EA/ED, in part because they know where they want to go and aren’t interested in applying anywhere else.
Non-athlete VIP kids with no obvious reason to choose any particular school (e.g., the child of a fabulously wealthy foreign businessperson with a history of philanthropy) may be genuinely undecided and leave it to the RD round, where schools will be inclined to compete for them. It’s also possible that they change their mind. I’m confident if after being admitted SCEA to Harvard, Malia Obama had indicated to Stanford that she was really considering going there, Stanford would have admitted her RD, without the full committee process. Others with direct knowledge should weigh in, though.
@TheOldTimer and anyone interested in reading: The only way to cut 30k+ applicants down to manageable size for meaningful holistic processing is to use computer model that runs multiple rounds of “cut”, each “cut” may use different parameters with corresponding importance factors, and different levels of human judgement of non-quantitative measurable such essay scores. This is a very interesting research paper taking about the mathematical model in detail, 98 pages so happy reading. http://www.collegeboard.com/prod_downloads/press/adm_decision_making.pdf