With one exciting week left, I was just curious about something. Is there a fundamental difference in the way ivy (Harvard) admissions work?
For example, is the reading order different, are there more readers than other schools per app? Are they read by one regional rep first? Do they presort apps based on scores, majors, etc?
I’m just curious. I guess me and others have held ivy admissions to a complete different standard. But other than a larger pool of more qualified students do they do things differently?
Do faculty help read apps?
Comment with your knowledge Harvard or other wise.
Cheers!
Also I’ll be honest, I’ve had a very positive admissions process. So I’m curious if there’s something so radically different about these sets of schools.
A former Stanford Admissions Director goes over an applicant’s stats: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=96XL8vBBB7o. Notice how the AO easily pokes holes in the student EC list.
Amherst screens applications using GPA, transcript rigor and test scores to narrow down about 8,000 applications to about 1,000 files that are brought before the whole committee. The committee is then deciding who to admit and who to waitlist. The assumption that is not talked about: the other 7,000 kids who didn’t make it to committee were rejected. Harvard may use a similar approach, but I’m not sure.
The Admissions Directors are reading off of yellow “reader sheets” which is are hand written notes the AO’s make after each director reads a file. Harvard uses the same “reader sheets.”
All of the comments, save the last one which is quote from a student’s essay, were probably made by guidance counselors in their Secondary School Report or from teacher recommendations. That’s where Admissions years about a student’s “character.”
In the Amherst video, it did say that 1000 students reached committee. However, it never explicitly stated that GPA and test scores were used to make that cut solely.
@GregB77777: I’m making an educated guess as to how 8,000 applications, which are not examined by the committee, were winnowed down to 1,000 applications that are brought to committee. What possible other criteria could they they use besides test scores and GPA? Certainly not EC’s or essays, or teacher recs or guidance counselor reports – as those are being used to determine which of the 1,000 are accepted and which are waitlisted.
@gibby I’m not sure that is a reasonable conclusion given the data from that video.
In fact, I’m fairly certain that it’s not how things work.
Each admissions officer has a docket of files they read. At least for Harvard, I know for a fact that they read every single file. There is no “first cut” using SAT data. Amherst may be different, but my guess it that they do read every single file.
I don’t know what happens after that, but I expect it’s something like each officer is allowed to bring 20% of their docket to the committee. How they decide which ones to bring is up to them.
I don’t think it’s as cut and dried as applying an SAT cutoff score.
@GregB77777: Going back to the Amherst video: One of the first applicants to be brought before the committee is a student who is described by their teacher as someone who “thinks inside the box.” When voting, not one hand in the committee goes up to admit that student.
At Harvard, Admissions Officers pre-screen applicants by reading their teacher recommendations, essays, SSR, EC’s and interview report and bring only the strongest applicants before the committee. Obviously that does not happen at Amherst, otherwise the applicant who “thinks inside the box” would never have made it to committee because it wastes the committee’s time. So, at Amherst some other criteria besides teacher recommendations are being used to winnow 8,000 applications down to 1,000. Logically, if teacher recommendations aren’t being used for that purpose at Amherst, it must be test scores and grades.
@GregB77777 With all due respect, no one over the age of 21 believes that Harvard, Columbia, et al “reads” 35,000 applications. Physically impossible. There is some sort of computerized pre-screening taking place.
Further, I believe that such pre-screening would be entirely appropriate. The only problem, of course, is that some students (as has been shown on this very web site) will make up whatever ECs they believe will trick the system. At that point the student has only their own conscience to hold them to account.
I know for a fact that Harvard reads all applications.
Harvard even interviews all applicants-- or makes an attempt to. I can’t tell you how many interviews I’ve done where the kid had an 86 GPA, two Ds and an F on his transcript— and still I had to interview him.
It is frustrating to me to spend my time doing this when I highly suspect they have no chance of being admitted… yet even so, Harvard tries to interview all applicants
@rednecktiger Schools hire temporary readers to help go through the applications. I’m sure that they become quite adept at quickly reading through bad applications. As an example, Duke rejects half of applications after the first read.
The New York Times has a five article series on their choice blogs, or something like that, written by Dean Fitzsimmons that talk about admissions at Harvard. It’s quite informative. This is the one that talks most specifically about the admissions process: http://thechoice.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/09/10/harvarddean-part1/#more-7513
When taken with @gibby s information, it’s probably fairly helpful. At least, I found it to be.
@gibby @GregB77777 Amherst most definitely reads all applications to some degree. I would go as far as to say that they read the whole thing for some applications, but I am sure they look at every application! Especially since diversity is a big deal to them. They have quite a spread of regional readers, so I’d assume each reads about a few hundreds. When I was there they had a sense of closeness to the application readings, in that they didn’t seem removed from the process. As with the Stanford link I posted above notes that Stanford has 52 readers or something like that, it seems that schools adding on more readers to deal with the influx of apps.
Hey, if you’re charging someone up to 90 dollars an app and you’re only paying the CA like five dollars an app, I hope they’d be able to afford readers!