A question regarding "Holistic" admissions and "Perfect Scores"

[molliebatmit]

<p>

@sosomenza

Most students don’t get a full holistic review… I’d guess that 36000-90% of the applications get quickly sent to the rejection pile with little more than a couple of minutes of consideration. (Not really holistic in my opinion)

At least as far as MIT goes, this is completely false – the admissions officers have written extensively about the admissions process on the blogs. </p>

<p>From the site (<a href=“http://mitadmissions.org/apply/process/selection/[/url]”>http://mitadmissions.org/apply/process/selection/&lt;/a&gt;)

Once your application is complete, it will first be read by a senior admissions officer who will consider your application in a holistic manner, within its proper context. Strong applications will then be evaluated by additional admissions officers, who will summarize it at length for the committee.</p>

<p>These summaries, along with your entire application, will then go to the selection committee, where multiple groups of different admissions staff and faculty members will weigh in. At least a dozen people will significantly discuss and debate an application before it is placed in the admit pile.</p>

<p>This is all very intentional: committee decisions ensure that every decision is correct in the context of the overall applicant pool, and that no one individual’s bias or preferences or familiarity with a given case has any chance of swaying a decision unfairly.

Only a very small number of clearly non-competitive applications are removed before general reading, and no more are removed before selection. The number of applications that aren’t fully read is, to my understanding based on conversations with the admissions officers, significantly less than ten percent. The remaining applications are read by several readers, then discussed in selection committee until a decision is reached.</p>

<p>In terms of time, each application is read multiple times, at around half an hour per read ([First</a> read | MIT Admissions](<a href=“http://mitadmissions.org/blogs/entry/first_read]First”>First read | MIT Admissions)). Selection lasts full-time for about two weeks or so (including weekends), which is about another 10-15 minutes of discussion. Of course, MIT doesn’t get 40,000 applications – it gets less than half that, and they are divided into more manageable chunks (EA, RD domestic, RD international). </p>

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@sosomenza

For the vast majority that don’t have the grades or the SAT or have’nt taken the required course load then they will get a fail-safe review.

This is also a misconception, incidentally – the grades and SAT scores of applicants fall in a very narrow band. Very few grossly unqualified people bother to apply.</p>