<p>What happens to a student from each school? Are the applicants judged in context of his/her area, or are they compared with other applicants? How are the adcom debates like on whether admitting or turning down an applicant? Tell me the internal process. I have checked the website's description on what happens, but I was wondering if there was something more . . . I was looking for more depth in what happens. From you guys of course.</p>
<p>When a fight breaks out over whether or not to admit a student the adcom splits into two groups and has a rooftop ninja battle on top of the Green Building.</p>
<p>They hold pistol-duels accross the infinite. There are student/faculty casualties. High-stakes, prestigious casualties. All in the name of undergraduate admissions.</p>
<p>Huh, how are we supposed to know?</p>
<p>Applicants are judged in context of their area and what's available, but not in direct comparison with other applicants. </p>
<p>When applications come in, the staff in the mail room organizes them into folders, and then the folders are dropped off to individual admissions officers (randomly, I am fairly sure). Each admissions officer spends several weeks reading applications, and makes notes on each individual applicant, and each application is read by at least two people. A good entry on what happens when an application is read is [here[/url</a>], by Matt.</p>
<p>At the end of the reading process, all of the admissions officers come together for several very long days and select the class. They are put into small groups, and each group gets a big stack of applications to sift through.
Each group picks out its admits over the course of several days, and each applicant is seen by many (all?) groups. At the end, they see how many people they want to admit, which is almost always more than they can take, so they have to winnow the pile.
The applications all go through a final review to make sure nothing crazy has happened.
[quote=Ben Jones]
A lot of stuff will happen this week, so no decision is set in stone. Decisions will be reviewed by various subcommittees, and finally Marilee will go over each admit to give her final stamp of approval.<a href="All%20of%20these%20Ben%20quotes%20are%20from%20%5Burl=http://www.mitadmissions.org/topics/apply/the_selection_process_application_reading_committee_and_decisions/from_the_midst_of_selection.shtml%5Dthis%5B/url%5D%20blog%20entry%20about%202005%20EA%20admissions.">/quote</a></p>
<p>There are a lot of entries about the admissions process in [url=<a href="http://www.mitadmissions.org/topics/apply/the_selection_process_application_reading_committee_and_decisions/completearchive.shtml%5Dthis">http://www.mitadmissions.org/topics/apply/the_selection_process_application_reading_committee_and_decisions/completearchive.shtml]this</a> category](<a href="http://www.mitadmissions.org/topics/apply/the_selection_process_application_reading_committee_and_decisions/reading_folders.shtml%5Dhere%5B/url">http://www.mitadmissions.org/topics/apply/the_selection_process_application_reading_committee_and_decisions/reading_folders.shtml) on the MIT site, especially if you scroll down to the 2004/2005 entries.</p>
<p>So, for a more serious reply, here are two blog entries by Matt McGann about reading and selection. (And can I just say that I feel old, because while scanning through old blog entries to find this, I realized that the selection entry is actually about the selection committee for the class of '09, which is my class, and I remember reading that entry when it was published back in the early days of the MITblogs when I was a high school senior. Yikes.)</p>
<p>They have giant orgies involving animals and humans alike. In the midst of all this, they decide--very randomly, mind ye--on who to accept/reject/kill, etc.</p>
<p>"They have giant orgies involving animals and humans alike. In the midst of all this, they decide--very randomly, mind ye--on who to accept/reject/kill, etc."</p>
<p>...in an attempt to find the Blood Orchid, in which they blow up said orgy....wow, Anacondas 2 was a pathetic movie</p>