@oldfort Seriously? They’re looking at prospective students, for heaven’s sake, not doing security check for a Top Secret clearance. I know what an academic job search looks like, and that is the most rigorous search that universities ever do. Since they don’t check whether the candidate has a sibling, or what that sibling is doing, for three faculty members who they are interviewing to be in positions of authority for the next 6 years at very least, then they are not doing it for the thousands of students who are going to be students for the next four years.
There is more than enough reasons to be paranoid about the application processes without inventing reasons for further paranoia.
I am in no way saying that AOs would hold it against younger siblings (please go back and ready my posts). I am saying it is possible for AOs to keep track if they should choose to.
Many top tier schools only admit 1000-1500 students/year. I think AOs get to know their applicants pretty well by the time they make their decisions.
With the latest admission scandal, I think the adcom may step up doing more verifications in the future and hence know their applicants even better.
I’ve not noticed it. I have a lot of kids and a number of them applied to the same schools. I’ve not heard any such thing from all the kids I’ve personally known who have gone through the process and I span over 17 years of direct personal experience.
But that is not to say that any given school at any given time, given certain events or happenings won’t do something like that.