<p>I wonder how many people it takes to read 9,000 applications? If a person can read three applications per hour, giving each application 20 minutes, that’s 3,000 man hours which is 375 8 hour days. Assuming the work has to be completed between January 1st and March 15 (lumping ED in with RD for simplicity), that’s about 60 work days. 375 divided by 60 is 6.25. That’s 6 people. </p>
<p>If their compensation is somewhere around $100,000 per year (assuming they’ve got lots of things to keep them busy during the other 9 months of the year!) that would be about equal to the application fee total. I’ve always heard schools don’t make any money on applications, and I think that’s probably true.</p>