They will be considering the overall makeup of their current graduate students and may seek to address imbalances by pursuing a particular mix of incoming students.
In some cases, they may decline to offer you admission because they think you will be accepted and choose to go elsewhere. It is not uncommon for a student to be rejected by their safety schools, but accepted by their dream programs. Throughout this process, applications that present a compelling narrative about why the applicant wants to pursue a graduate degree and why the applicant is a good fit for doing so at that particular program tend to be more successful than those that do not present that narrative.
Remember that they see dozens upon dozens of applications. So your narrative as told in your statement of purpose, letters of recommendation, and even writing sample is your best chance of standing out. When I got that big pile of admit letters to sign, I thought of all the candidates on the receiving end, of their story and journey.
I never used a signature stamp — each letter was personally signed by me. Signing the letters for large rounds across a number of programs at Babson, my office was in charge of recruiting and admissions for four MBA programs and several specialized business masters could sometimes take a couple of hours.
I used to play music so I can infuse great energy into the pile in front of me. I danced in my seat a bit that day — we had put together a great class that year! You can reach Petia at petia mymbapath.
About Us. What our students say. Toggle navigation. Suheb Hussain. Published Aug 25, People who read this article also read A Few Related Posts:. Let's discuss further - What's your take? Cancel reply. Feel free to ask any Query. Query must be more than 15 characters long. Please enter your email id below. Our Support team will contact you soon. Admissions committees are made up of real, live humans whose sole job is to put together the best incoming class possible for their college or university.
A college admissions committee is a group of people who work together to make decisions about who is accepted as part of the next matriculating class. Admissions committees are made up of admissions staffers - university employees whose job it is to assess each applicant and decide whether or not he or she is a good fit for acceptance. Most highly selective schools are fairly secretive or nebulous about their admissions process, but many public schools have guaranteed admission for students who meet certain criteria, as well as offer specific information about expected scores and GPAs for applicants.
Your college application will likely be read by at least two groups of people - regional staffers and the wider admissions committee, which may be made up of deans, faculty members, and even current students. Regional staffers are college admissions employees who focus on your specific geographical region. They are typically the people who travel to college fairs in your region and may conduct interviews. You might have met them before, if you attended a college fair at your school or in your area.
The rest of the admissions committee can be structured differently, depending on the college or university. Often, there are deans or other high-ranking members of the admissions office who participate in the second read-through of your application. Some schools include students on the admissions committee, who speak to whether or not applicants would be a good addition to the larger school community and student body. The admissions committee at Harvard assesses the grades, test scores, extracurricular activities, intended majors, ethnicities, and regional background of every student.
From this information, we can assume that other highly competitive and secretive schools use similar criteria. Very few schools divulge what happens during their admissions process or give specific, data-driven criteria. While the specific questions may vary from school to school, the basic gist is the same. Most college admissions committees have at least a two-step process for applicants.
First, applications are read by regional staffers. These admissions committee members look over your application for basic qualifications like grades, test scores, and extracurriculars to make sure you match up to the standards of the typical matriculating student.
At least one reader scores each application, but at selective institutions as many as three or four readers may score an application. Different colleges use different scoring systems, but at this point in the reading process, most adcoms divide students into four categories:. Students who receive a unanimously strong score are usually placed in Bucket I and slated for acceptance. Based on that review and discussion, some of these candidates will be accepted, while others will be rejected.
This analysis enables the school to determine whether their potential freshman class class will be well-balanced in terms of academic interests, backgrounds, and other factors. For example, if the admissions committee realizes that a class is light on music majors, they might accept a talented piano player whose GPA falls slightly outside the desired range.
If the adcom fails to find candidates who meet their needs in Bucket III, they might dip into Bucket IV to fill out the pool of accepted students. By researching the acceptance rate, student body size, and applicant pool size for the schools on your list, you can discern which admissions model described below your schools of interest are likely to follow. Larger schools that receive tens of thousands of applicants each year tend to spend less time reviewing each application.
At these schools, admissions officers will only review the extracurricular profiles and essays of students who make it through this algorithmic academic screening.
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