Craziest Admissions Stories

sakky
Sun, 02 Jan 2005 10:54:54 +0000

I still wouldn’t characterize it as necessarily anything wrong with the adcom officers. As I said before, the purpose of the admissions committee is not to admit the best entering class, but rather to matriculate the best entering class, and there’s a subtle but important difference between the two. Let’s face it. You’re not going to matriculate every student you admit. If an adcom has reason to believe that you’re not going to matriculate, then the adcom is well within its rights to not admit you, even if you’re a superstar. After all, why keep a seat open for you if they have a strong reason to believe that you’re not going to take it? It’s not like it’s costless for them to do so - by keeping a seat open for you, they have to either deny or waitlist somebody else who has a greater chance of taking that seat. Rather than do that, it may be more efficient for them to simply deny you that seat and give it to that other guy. After all, if you weren’t going to take the seat anyway, who cares if you were denied?