is my 100 point drop a normal thing?!?!

[siserune]

<p>Most schools indeed have a multi-stage procedure that allows rejection decisions to be made prior to the formal admission committee. From the Yale Daily News, Feb 16, 2005:</p>

<p>

The process, the former admissions officer said, typically begins with a student’s admissions folder. The officer assigned to that student’s geographical area will read the folder and make comments on a card, and then he or she will often pass the folder on to an “outside,” or second, reader. The admissions process culminates with a folder’s trip to the admissions committee. Sitting around a table in the admissions office, three or four admissions officers make or break the futures of applicants.</p>

<p>“You go through … and you call out each name and you vote thumbs up or thumbs down,” the former admissions officer said, noting that most applicants who are vetoed by the geographical admissions officer do not even get discussed.</p>

<p>“Only the kids that you want to talk about actually get talked about and have their application discussed,” the officer said. </p>

<p><a href=“http://www.yaledailynews.com/articles/view/13301[/url]”>http://www.yaledailynews.com/articles/view/13301&lt;/a&gt;

</p>

<p>At Harvard: “Between 5,000 and 7,000 applicants proceed to… the full committee meeting, in which all 35 admissions officers debate and vote on who will make the final cut.”
<a href=“http://www.bostonmagazine.com/articles/keys_to_the_kingdom/[/url]”>http://www.bostonmagazine.com/articles/keys_to_the_kingdom/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>At Amherst: “The process began in the fall. Every application was read at least twice. By the time the 11-member admissions committee met in March, they’d already eliminated half the applicants.”
<a href=“http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/education/jan-june04/merrow_6-22.html[/url]”>http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/education/jan-june04/merrow_6-22.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>Vanderbilt FAQ outlining their admissions process:
<a href=“http://www.vanderbilt.edu/Admissions/applySelection.php[/url]”>http://www.vanderbilt.edu/Admissions/applySelection.php&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>MIT:
<a href=“http://www.mitadmissions.org/topics/misc/miscellaneous/visualize_whirled_peas.shtml[/url]”>http://www.mitadmissions.org/topics/misc/miscellaneous/visualize_whirled_peas.shtml&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>This is also described in the admissions books by Chuck Hughes (Harvard), Michelle Hernandez (Dartmouth), Rachel Toor (Duke), and in *The Gatekeepers<a href=“Wesleyan”>/i</a>. </p>

<p>Almost every school has some funneling process where applicants can be rejected before the committee stage, and at every school the readers who precede the committee produce applicant ratings and written notes based on whatever they find of interest in the file. This is well-known to CC readers.</p>

<p>What is not known are examples of schools where “the decision-makers won’t even see the order of the scores, or how many times you took the test.”. If you know of such examples please do post them, I think many people here would be interested.</p>