<p>Can anyone tell me or direct me to an article about how admissions offices work? I'm not looking for whats important in a college application, I'm interested in the amount of time people spend looking at your application, how many people look at it, whether they discuss, etc. Just curious.</p>
<p>From what I understand...typically a local area admissions officer looks at your app-rates it-then passes it on to the admissions office for futher review if so merited.</p>
<p>PBS did a segment on admissions at Amherst, which included showing the admissions committee reviewing applications. Do a search on the PBS website and you'll find it.</p>
<p>The admissions officer blogs on the MIT admissions website discuss how they read and select applications.</p>
<p>Many of the selection process entries are collected [url=<a href="http://www.mitadmissions.org/topics/apply/the_selection_process_application_reading_committee_and_decisions/completearchive.shtml%5Dhere%5B/url">http://www.mitadmissions.org/topics/apply/the_selection_process_application_reading_committee_and_decisions/completearchive.shtml]here[/url</a>].</p>
<p>Pull a Tom Cruise and go all Mission:Impossible. </p>
<p>Seriously though, I read a book, and it basically said that they look at your app and make a prelim decision, then pass it to the higher-ups to final approve. However, I could be totally wrong.</p>
<p>Wow that PBS thing was helpful. Thanks!</p>
<p>From what I got from the video, a preliminary committee rejects about half the applicants and the rest go on to the admissions committee and they make acceptance decisions.</p>
<p>"The Gatekeepers" by Jacques Steinberg
-- story follows a admissions guy from Wesleyan thru a year. Its actually a great read, plus very illuminating regarding how some colleges go about sifting through hundreds of applications.</p>
<p>You should read one of Michele Hernandez's books like...A is for Acceptance or A is for Admissions or something like that. I just read it for about an hour at Barnes & Noble one time but she gave a detailed explanation of how application review goes (or went, about 5 years ago) at Dartmouth, including how the information is presented (a card gets typed up with all the "vital stats"), how certain applications are "tagged" or "flagged" (different colors designate athlete, super-donator legacy, different URMs, etc.), and how there are very few automatic acceptances or automatic rejects. You should check it out.</p>
<p>I second "The Gatekeepers". It was interesting, funny, and very valuable for me doing my own applications.</p>
<p>U Penn: <a href="http://www.csmonitor.com/durable/1998/12/15/fp11s1-csm.shtml%5B/url%5D">http://www.csmonitor.com/durable/1998/12/15/fp11s1-csm.shtml</a></p>
<p>U Chicago: <a href="http://www-news.uchicago.edu/citations/99/990329.admissions1.html%5B/url%5D">http://www-news.uchicago.edu/citations/99/990329.admissions1.html</a></p>
<p>I know everyone else already said it but "Gatekeepers" really helped me put my application together and to focus on things colleges would want. It also shows that admissions officers are real human beings who worry about the decisions they have to make, not the anonymous "adcom" we all fear, which is nice.</p>