I was wondering about the review and acceptance process. When reviewing an application, is it just one person from the university that looks over you’re information and decides whether you’re in or not or do you get looked at by several people and they come to a consensus?
A board reviews it.
At least for top schools, I know that regional representatives look at the application first. They decide, and if they like your application, it goes on to another set of representatives. Only a small portion of the applications actually reach the admissions deans of the school.
Even when it gets to the deans, it’s a whole committee that reviews your application. They vote to see if you’re in or not.
You can look up Youtube Videos about college admissions.
One video is called: “College Admissions: Inside the Decision Room” which is about Amherst and is pretty informative.
Short answer: Usually more than one person unless you are way out of range academically.
Thanks all, was just wondering if one person made the decision to the future of my life.
How much time do they spend looking at one person’s application?
This really depends on the school. If you are curious about the process at very selective schools, this paper goes into some depth about the process of reading/scoring apps at Williams: http://www.nber.org/papers/w15772.pdf
It’s kind of dense and is really a study about how kids choose schools they are admitted to, but it includes a lot of info about how apps are considered as well.