@Hanna That’s a great question! Given the hours and hours students spent in test prep, testing, essays, and filling out applications, a six minute skim through followed by a form letter seems a disrespectful response.
Doesn’t take long to tag all the applications from the institutional highest “wish list” with 1) athlete recruits, 2) development cases, 3) political-power-fame-connected, 4) URM’s, 5) FGLI and QuestBridge awardees, followed then by 6) geographic, including international, distribution, 7) special talents in performing arts, STEM, civic engagements, etc. and 8) high academic achievements. 1) through 3) are typically pre-identified in advance, so the rest doesn’t take much time.
4), 5), the 1G and QB parts of 6), and legacy can be identified by a computer program before admission readings. Depending on how the college receives the applicant’s academic record, some pre-processing or flagging of 8) (both favorably and unfavorably) can also be done.
I think that one reader spending a mere 8 minutes on an application is a little insulting to the applicant. But it’s more acceptable in my eyes if there’s a committee of 4-6 readers who comb through 4 applications in half an hour. From videos I’ve seen, it seems like applications are usually looked through by small committees.
@AroundHere although a six minute skim might seem disrespectful all things considered, there’s an adcom who posts regularly on SDN that about 50% of med school applicants have no business being on a med school campus except as standardized patients. Six minutes might be too long.
I’d say 8 minutes is right. The hard data is already formatted. If the reader assigns it a score, maybe a minute.
Then the ECs and essays? An essay only takes 2 minutes to read. Score or a general impression and then move on.
Only the ones in the middle take more time. “No’s are out. Heck yes are in. the maybes, they may get read again or sent to another reader. So they can’t spend too much time or it will never end!!!
Some are mixing up first cut, the additional reads, and final committee.
Hanna, I’d like to see them close the gate sooner, reduce the number of apps to the most competitive colleges, get rid of some of the insanity. But I guess that wouldn’t be “nice.” But no way, no way 6 or 8 minutes is enough for a full app. Anyone ever count the pages?
In terms of closing the gates, either having a short preliminary application and then invited students can submit more essays, recommendations, interviews, arts supplements, etc or having stricter minimum application standards that filter out the wannabes early to save students time and money would be a nice improvement to the system.
That first sentence had better be a show-stopper.
"I didn’t intend to murder my parents. OK, now that I have your attention, I’m going to describe what I did last summer in Maine. I didn’t kill my parents. I killed fish. I boiled lobster. I cut them open and ate them. Then I watched the solar eclipse.
What kind of ritual is this? Killing sentient beings, then eating them. Then weirdly looking at the sun through a piece of glass in the middle of the afternoon. It’s inhumane. I want to go to college to learn how to be humane, starting with the first thing I do each day." ETC.
I never expected that it would be more. People whose job entails reading through a lot of material every day can generally scan for information pretty quickly. So it’s not as if they aren’t going to get past the first sentence of an essay - but they definitely aren’t going to be spending time trying to decipher convoluted sentence structure.
That being said, it’s a dozen years since my younger kid applied to undergrad, and I can still remember the opening sentences of her common app essay & of her older brother’s five years earlier. You definitely don’t want to bury the lede.
Eight minutes is a LOT longer than the typical job applicant gets for their initial review.
I don’t see how it is disrespectful. So what if the student studied 100 hours for the SAT? I can see and evaluate the score releative to a typical applicant in 10 seconds. I don’t need to drink a cup of tea and mull over it.
In my career (my real work) I have read thousands of essays. Sometimes typed. Sometimes in bluebooks. 6-8 minutes would be about right for a final exam, 10-12 for a several-page typed essay. I evaluate and grade them. I don’t have to write any comments, though I sometimes do because students pick up their exam the next semester. A letter or number grade will usually do, perhaps with just a few added words – such as excellent, 95%, MP, MFP, confusing, perceptive.
Would you close the gap early on by having an SAT and GPA minimum?
But the essay isn’t being graded in the application package – it is just an overview process. And with a 650 word limit, it’s all on one page. So the ad com is looking over the file and basically the essay may or may not provide useful info about the applicant, and beyond that there is a quick qualitative decision along the lines of wow, meh, or ick. Most essays probably fall into the meh category. A wow essay might tip the balance in favor of admission.
Same deal with LOR’s – quick scan for new info, and an overall impression.
I am sure that SOME applications get a longer look – something sets it apart from others and merits more time. But that would be countered by all the applications that take less time.
Let us say that a college graduate reads 450 words per minute. The main common app essay has a 650 word limit,
This means the main essay can be read in one and a half minutes.
You forget a few things. First, this is day in/day out for what can be 3 months in RD. Long days. Then that, unfortunately, most kids, even top performers, don’t pull together a “Heck, Yeah!” app/supp. It’s not as simple as scanning through, not about liking a first line, then rubber stamping. Every high school can have a different transcript format, some LoRs are long winded, those essays often shed no light. And all the while, believe it or not, you’re looking for positives. Then, yes, you write comments. Again, trying to be measured and fair, even when you want to shout.
And holistic. For elites, you don’t get to like a kid only for the peaks and ignore the rest. In the end, though each kid is seen as an individual first, you’re culling, not grading, and certainly not just causally observing.
Add to that, unlike grading or reading for pleasure (or checking a resume for job experience,) you’re also looking for qualities, traits, etc.
The eight minutes itself doesn’t bother me too much. The concern I have is the total number of applications that a person is required to view each day, and how much one application can impact another. The CBE examples I’ve seen seem to indicate 4-5 minutes for each person to review (for a total of 8 minutes). That means as many as 15 application each hour.
How do the AOs clear their mind so that they minimize the Contrast Effect (the tendency to compare each application to the one that came before it)? If the last person’s application was phenomenal and included the best essays and LOR’s the reviewer has ever seen, what chance does the next applicant have? From what I’ve seen on the CBE’s, this bias isn’t eliminated since the reviewing team is looking at the same applications at the same time.
Part of revising an essay multiple times is about making it more readable. So it’s a good thing if it can be read quickly.
Eight minutes is longer than many military officers get reviewed for promotion boards, which definitely affects careers.
@shortnuke - that’s a good point. I had not thought of that before but there certainly could be an effect from one app to another.