Two videos to watch:
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.
From Amherst Admissions: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y-OLlJUXwKU. Several things to notice from this video:
- 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.”