You people have changed my mind about this. There was a time that I got a flood (a FLOOD) of resumes and cover letters for a technical job opening (a nearby business was closing down). I doubt I spent even two minutes on each culling the applicants. When I had a much smaller stack of possibles, I only spent a minute or so each sorting them into the order I’d do interviews. So it can work.
I blame the flood of applications on the Common App and the ability to apply at so many schools at once. But @InfoQuestMom has an excellent point: you need to find a financial fit, but you can’t know where that is until you apply.
I recall we visited colleges at different times of the year, and there were a few I sat through a couple times as each pup had to “demonstrate interest”. Sitting through group information sessions with the obligatory Q&A with an admissions officer before a tour, etc. in the winter of junior year with DS, and then a summer visit with DD, I recall DH mentioning to me that the admissions staff seemed much friendlier, certainly a better mood, in the summer time. In the winter visit, the admission officer was quick to wrap up the session and get us on our tour, but in the summer, she hung out afterwards and made herself available for questions.
I am certain that many admissions officers at elite schools have varied backgrounds, but of the dozens that I met, many shared that they had been English majors - which to me meant they have honed their analytical skills to quickly see what they are looking for, and they read very, very fast. When they see an applicant is simply too similar to many they have already rejected, it becomes easier.
While all of the top schools were adamant that they “read everything you send us”, there was a stark difference in the way it was said in a winter session vs. a summer visit, especially when they made the point about how many rec letters they ask for. In the summer, they talked about an applicant who included 14 rec letters as if it was humorous, whereas in the winter we heard a similar story, but it definitely came across as more “annoying” than funny.
Strunk and White said it all about writing, and editing, essays: “Vigorous writing is concise. A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts. This requires not that the writer make all his sentences short, or that he avoid all detail and treat his subjects only in outline, but that every word tell.”
― William Strunk Jr., The Elements of Style
Eight minutes seems pretty close to correct to me. When I was in grad school I was a student member of the admissions committee. The applications consisted of a college transcript, an essay, two letters of recommendation and a portfolio. We had an hour for lunch and probably went through 8 to 10 a day. The denials were easy. There were always some who had everything - good grades, essays, recommendations and the portfolios were relevant. (I remember trying to evaluate a dance portfolio for architecture school - ack! and I do like dance.)
I did the math when my s applied to u mich five years ago. they are up to 55k applicants, my take is that you must have a mechanical method of cutting a huge number of applicants very quickly based on quantitative measures (normalized gpa, sat, URM status, etc).
subsequently, one of my business partners met an ex-admissions officer from columbia. reportedly, her first cut was based on sat > 2200, which should remove a huge number of applicants. Not sure this was really done (I’m hearing it second-hand) but it reinforced my assessment.
this informed which schools were on our kid’s lists and the amount of time they studied for the standardized tests
Or, they could do like UC does, which is distribute the holistic reading across many readers (each application read and scored by two or three of the readers). Then they are ranked by score to determine where the cut point for admission will be. I.e. the centralized part of the process is mechanical or mostly so, in order not to bottleneck the process of holistically (re-)reading tens of thousands of applications in front of a central admission committee.
