<p>Has anybody wondered how some of these top schools actually provide quality time to review SO many applications? I'm sure they have plenty of staff (reviewers) look over all the apps. With so much information to look over you have to think all these apps begin to look alike. I would hate to have my application reviewed on a Monday morning or Friday afternoon! </p>
<p>I guess they would look at certain criteria to even decide what "pile" to put it on such as, ACT/SAT scores, HS GPA, etc...</p>
<p>They probably have a system that goes through (if it is electronic) and sort out all of the rejects (due to grades or whatever), then they probably go by hand after that.</p>
<p>I’ve wondered as well. How the HECK do 20 people read 35,000 applications in 8 weeks? It works out to OVER 4,000 applications a week, except that each one is supposedly read twice. </p>
<p>This would mean that each of the twenty people in the office is reading 400 applications a week (8000 divided by 20), or 80 applications a day. If you assume they’re working eight hour days, that’s 10 per HOUR (assuming no bathroom breaks, etc.) or 6 minutes per application. </p>
<p>So the decision that you’ve been prepping for for YEARS of your life gets made in twelve minutes total. </p>
<p>And just perhaps, if you’re the 80th application to be read that day, nobody really reads it all that carefully – and then when the committee meets, the reader can’t actually keep the 3200 applications that they personally read straight and so they have you confused with the red-haired boy that plays the trombone and is from Wisconsin. As Dr. Phil would say: Good luck with that.</p>
<p>I have heard a number of admissions officers state very candidly that they spend 10-12 minutes on each application. After a while, they know exactly what they are looking for. Office staff has already added a sheet summarizing the “hard” statistics such as GPA/SAT/ACT scores so the admissions officers don’t have to go searching for that.</p>
<p>I think there is an initial weed out to thin out the numbers by each school’s method . The first time through there is a major elimination ,before they start to read them .</p>
<p>I’ve always wondered the same thing, Gtbguy1. It’s safest to assume that every application will not receive an exquisitely nuanced evaluation. </p>
<p>Adcoms at the schools I’m most familiar with work far more than 40 hours per week during reading season. W&M Admissions has an interesting blog that provides some nice insider-ish information (though not as much as applicants/parents would like): [W&M</a> Blogs Admit It!](<a href=“http://blogs.wm.edu/author/admiss/]W&M”>Admit It!, Author at The William & Mary Blogs)</p>
<p>As I understand it, many applications are not presented for discussion in committee. Several years ago I read “Admissions Confidential” by Rachel Toor, then an adcom at Duke. Though things must have changed somewhat in 8-ish years, at the time the school had guidelines in place for automatic admits and denials following an initial reading. That’s an unpleasant book, btw, and probably too dated now to be worthwhile.</p>
<p>I don’t kids realize that by pushing the number of applications they submit so high in the long run to a certain group of colleges all they are doing is short changing themselves. More is not better IMO and no college is going to hire “more” admissions officers simply because they have more applications…the ultimate class size doesn’t increase, the revenue from that class size doesn’t increase there’s no business reason to increase admissions and applications ultimately get skimmed. It’s a zero sum game IMO.</p>
<p>Jacques Steinberg’s The Gatekeepers: Inside the Admissions Process of a Premier College is a another book that describes the process (the author was an observer at Wesleyan). It’s exhausting to read the process they go through!</p>
<p>I agree. I am sure some fall through the cracks. It is what it is. There are so many applications even after the initial weeding out. We all have finite attention span. They may have a system to minimize randomness but I doubt that it can be perfect.</p>
<p>From what I gather the first reader is responsible for the summary, and many times a number is attached to the applicant. 1-4 - reject 8 -9 automatic admissions 5,6,7,8 go to committee - or something close to that. The second reader probably just skims in half the time. Imagine how those applicants must all look so similar. Plus there are target things they probably want - geographical, minorities, etc. I believe sports are vetted separately. And I’m betting anything come the end of the pile of applicants they are VERY aware of how many needed financial aid, even if they’re need blind they are going to know they can only have x% needing financial aid. </p>
<p>You’ll never know if you were rejected because you were read when they were tired or hungry.</p>
<p>For Applications for the Class of 2014, I know that Middlebury cut back on their application. You no longer needed to submit a graded paper or a supplemental essay because one of their cuts following 2008 financial meltdown was the reduction of admissions staff. They determined that the information gleamed from those two things did not significantly affect acceptance to warrant the expense of staff. Of course, with no supplement or graded paper, their applications went way up. Not surprised. My S didn’t apply to Williams because he thought the supplemental essay was esoteric… although I suspect he was just over writing supplements and couldn’t craft one for them out of others he’d already written.</p>
<p>Honestly, I think my D whose in the application pools this season is going to have a harder time at some of these big schools, which is where she wants to go. She’s neither a shoe-in or an automatic reject on paper. Or rather, I don’t think so. But it is what it is, and it all works out eventually.</p>
<p>“Holistic” admissions procedures may vary from school to school. For example, the procedure at Berkeley, described in the Hout Report linked from [url=<a href=“http://academic-senate.berkeley.edu/committees/aepe]here[/url”>Admissions, Enrollment, and Preparatory Education (AEPE) | Academic Senate]here[/url</a>] is likely different from that use by some other schools. In this case, two readers score each application; if the scores are different by too much, a senior reader also scores it. Then the applicants for each division (or major in some cases) are rank ordered by the scores to determine who is admitted or not.</p>
<p>This appears to be different from the descriptions of “holistic” admissions processes at some other schools. The Berkeley procedure appears to be designed to maintain some level of consistency and be relatively easily able to scale to larger numbers of applications by hiring more readers.</p>
<p>college_query - The Gatekeeper’s was a very good read; very interesting. No doubt all admission officer’s are working long hours to get through the applicants. I would hope and like to expect that the application fees are going toward more reviewers at universities that receive the greatest number of applicants.</p>
<p>Remember, though, that the Berkeley process described in the Hout report likely has different goals compared to what has been described for some private schools (e.g. consistency and scalability versus “building a class of unique students”). The different goals are reflected in the difference in the process.</p>
<p>The common app. won’t be going anywhere anytime soon - it makes the whole college marketing machine economically feasible. I do wish that kids gave more thought to how the whole system really works - I think an objective understanding of the process might help some of them avoid some of the pain that comes with a rejection. Some might make better decisions for themselves if they didn’t feel compelled to compete for an admissions prize based on selectivity. </p>
<p>In The College Admissions Mystique by Bill Mayher, the author makes a very good point about the vulnerability of young adults first separating from their families and the quest for college admission that puts their sense of self worth in peril. I believe the process has only become more brutal since Mayher wrote his book.</p>
<p>I really worry about this with my son and his friends – the idea that college admissions is a sort of referendum on whether or not you have “wasted your life.” I’m hoping to take him to see some less competitive schools in VA over our Spring Break – mostly to convince him (and just maybe myself) that people all over the world have happy, fulfilling lives even if they end up attending a school that “no one has ever heard of.” He’s recently encountered some rejections on the music front and is taking them really hard!</p>
<p>Admissions officers only review COMPLETED files. The number of applications submitted is not the same as the number of actual, completed files. Many schools have applications submitted, but for whatever reason, the rest of the application process isn’t completed. </p>
<p>Still, the work load for an admissions officer at some of the high volume schools is daunting at this time of year.</p>
<p>Interesting, as many times a person hears the importance on completing an application and reviewing it thoroughly, I’m surprised to hear admission offices are still finding incomplete aps. That being the case, they probably don’t belong in a top school if they can’t double check their work!</p>
<p>Kinda diverting from the original post, I’m reading how many of the top schools accept kids that are from parents who are well connected to the school, kids from families are of extreme wealth or poverty, sons or daughters of high powered people in government of business, etc. I wonder how many slots are left over for regular HIGH achieving kids. I believe it really comes down to LUCK and as I said in my original post, hopefully someone reads your kid’s application in the middle of the week and who is alert that day.</p>
<p>No student will voluntarily reduce the number of applications he submits solely in order to avoid short-changing college applicants as a group. Each student who is interested in highly selective colleges has the incentive to submit many applications because the results are so unpredictable, and the fact that his application may get only 10 minutes of viewing time at each college makes the incentive even greater.</p>
<p>For full-pay students who are interested in merit aid, the incentives to submit many applications are greater still. Merit aid is predictable only for those colleges who guarantee merit aid based on stats (such as Baylor) or on NM status (such as Alabama). At the vast majority of colleges, merit scholarships, particularly full-tuition or full-ride scholarships, will go to a small percentage of students, and which students they are cannot be predicted.</p>