Of course it varies from school to school and it’s “holistic” - but what’s the typical admissions process? Do multiple AO’s review an application and give it an overall score - and then they admit the highest scoring applications after they’re all received? Do some schools fill up their “accepted piles” as they receive applications so later applications have less chance of admission? If my child happens to gets shut out in his first round of applications will late applications get equal consideration?
All those things. And more.
And totally school dependent. There’s no hard and fast.
Sometimes it’s one AO and sometimes more than one.
Sometimes there’s a GPA minimum/auto or test minimum auto or combined scoring and sometimes they look beyond.
Some fill up early or mostly fill up early and crumbs are left for later. Others, you have an equal chance right up to the end (although maybe not an equal chance for merit $$ or special programs).
Totally school dependent.
I love this podcast. Here’s just one useful episode:
I don’t know how to find it (sorry - maybe someone else can) but I saw a video on CC from the Holy Cross Admissions Office from last year or maybe a couple of years ago and they walked through each page of an admissions application and showed how they evaluated it. It was great info!
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Like others have said, it depends.
Many schools are not selective and everyone meeting their admissions criteria will be accepted. No scoring required.
Schools that are primarily holistic in their admissions review will assign scores for each factor they consider.
No. Selective schools usually have far more applicants that pass that first screen than they can accommodate. So they then go on to “shape the class” - deciding what they want their freshman class to look like. This is driven purely by institutional needs and priorities. Finally, they may consider yield in deciding who to make offers to.
For schools with rolling admissions, yes. Otherwise no. The latter have a fixed application date and they’ll start looking at all applicants only after that date. There is no advantage to applying early at non rolling admissions schools.
If you’re asking about EA/D → RD, applicants deferred to RD will be considered again in that round alongside all other RD applicants. Some, but not all, schools may prioritize students who applied in the early round and were deferred.
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I believe this may be the Holy Cross video you mentioned:
https://youtu.be/HDmEQTw2R8w?si=Y8LEeEjEy1HcKzbI
I found it helpful as well, but it is important to keep in mind that this is the process at ONE college with holistic admissions, and others may differ.
I used to be an alumni interviewer for Duke. Here is how they did things.
- First review would be from an admissions officer (or sometimes a seasonal reader) who was trained on how to read apps.
- Ratings were given in 6 categories with a 1-5 scale: Quality of Academic Program, Academic Achievement, Recommendations, Essays, Extracurriculars and Standardized Testing. Highest score was 30, lowest score was 6.
- Second review was by an admissions officer familiar with that region/high school.
- Sometimes a third review is done for discordant reviews, or with legacy/special cases.
- About 10% of the applicants are “auto rejected” if the ratings are too low, and also similarly another set % is sent to the “admit” category.
- The rest of the apps are reviewed by committee. Committee votes to accept, deny or waitlist.
- Those in the accepted pile are then whittled down by the Dean of Admissions in a process he called “sculpting the class”. This is where the class is fine tuned for institutional priorities.
- Along with this alumni were invited to interview candidates. We turned in a short response along with a rating for each candidate. I don’t think the alumni reports were used much except to keep alumni engaged.
Recruited athletes had a different process, and they also carved out a few dozen seats for wealthy donor kids (development cases). Legacy students were reviewed alongside the rest of the applicant pool. Duke also had separate scoring systems for Engineering vs Trinity. The engineering rubric weighed test scores twice as heavily, and also focused on math/science grades.
Jeffrey Selingo wrote a book titled Who Gets In and Why. It describes the process at several different schools.
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That’s what came to mind. OP would likely find it an interesting read.
I wonder if other schools do this and what this looks like in a TO world.
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