with so many apps every year, do you guys think that ellite colleges (e.g. ivies, t20) are secretly operating on a rolling basis where if they accept a certain number of (for example) asian male engineering students from texas they won’t accept anymore of the applicants with similar profiles? so it’s like first come first serve for space
No.
Many of those top schools have many admissions officers so assign them to states or regions or even cities (NYC, Boston). That admin officer or team knows how many male Asians are in the pool, knows who is the best, knows what the school needs (CS, Physics, artists, musicians). They shuffle the applications as they are deciding, but don’t decide until after the submission date.
There are books and articles on the admission process at some of the elite schools. Believe them when they say it doesn’t matter if you file your app on the first day it opens or the last.
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I have no reason to believe that any demographic constraints would be applied on a first-come-first-served basis and then held for many months before announcing. Why would a school turn down superior candidates based on a receipt date.
They fill a number of slots and then receive an IMO medalist and ISEF winner and think “that would be a great student, but these others came in earlier, so put that one on the “no” pile that we will announce in a few months”?