this is a good one: "How sunny weather lowers the college admissions bar"

[Papa_Chicken]

<p>…put this little factoid into your random-number-generating admissions modeling…</p>

<p>[How</a> sunny weather lowers the college admissions bar, and more - The Boston Globe](<a href=“http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2008/04/20/how_sunny_weather_lowers_the_college_admissions_bar_and_more/]How”>http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2008/04/20/how_sunny_weather_lowers_the_college_admissions_bar_and_more/)</p>

<p>

AS IF HIGH school seniors didn’t have enough to worry about: the odds of getting into a college are affected by the weather on the day their applications are reviewed, a recent study suggests. The author of the study gained access to 682 applicant files, each with 16 different academic and extracurricular ratings, along with recommendations from two reviewers. The applicant’s file also included the date each reviewer’s recommendation was made, which allowed the author to link the recommendations to the weather. (The admissions offices, the author verified, all had windows.) Applications reviewed on the sunniest days were more than 10 percent likelier to be accepted, and the good weather prompted reviewers to give less weight to academic achievement.</p>

<p>Simonsohn, U., “Clouds Make Nerds Look Good: Field Evidence of the Impact of Incidental Factors on Decision Making,” Journal of Behavioral Decision Making (April 2007).

</p>

<p>here is a link to the scholarly source paper referenced above:
<a href=“http://dp.wharton.upenn.edu/papers/Nerds2004_08_17.pdf[/url]”>http://dp.wharton.upenn.edu/papers/Nerds2004_08_17.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>I love the term “nerd index” used by the (Wharton) author!</p>

<p>ps…does this mean that Southern Californian admissions reviewers are more accepting?</p>

[barrons]

<p>N E R D S!!!</p>

<p>Just could not stop myself.</p>

[je_ne_sais_quoi]

<p>Class of 2013 nerd strategists: it’s your move. I’d get those meteorology charts together pretty darn quick. </p>

<p>Seriously though, I have wondered if your application is read early in the process, are you more or less likely to be admitted? (I don’t mean EA or ED.)</p>

[paying3tuitions]

<p>

ps…does this mean that Southern Californian admissions reviewers are more accepting?

</p>

<p>No, but we found the communication patterns differ. For example, from the SoCal university he attends, S got an invitation to a small party for East Coast applicants to meet the University president in NYC, before he knew whether or not he’d been actually accepted to the university. </p>

<p>He typed out to Admissions to find out just which kind of party this would be, promotional or for actual accepted students? What Yankees we are, wanting to know what kind of party it would be before he got there.</p>

[Papa_Chicken]

<p>for the mechanistically inclined, here’s a short primer from BBC on how weather affects human behavior:
[BBC</a> - Weather Centre - Features - Health and Culture - Weather and Behaviour](<a href=“http://www.bbc.co.uk/weather/features/health_culture/behaviour.shtml]BBC”>http://www.bbc.co.uk/weather/features/health_culture/behaviour.shtml)</p>

<p>on sunshine:

Lack of sunshine can cause can cause the ‘winter blues’.
It goes without saying that we tend to feel better when the sun is shining. Bright days with full sun are positively stimulating. In fact the lack of sunshine can cause what is commonly known as the ‘winter blues’ or Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD).</p>

<p>The hypothalamus is the part of the brain that rules our body’s main functions (mood, activity, sleep, temperature, appetite and sex drive). It is stimulated by the natural light that passes through the retinas in our eyes, and when less light is available these functions slow down.

</p>

<p>or perhaps its because sunshine is often associated with high pressure fronts which bring cooler weather & lower humidity?

Cooler days, with lower humidity, tend to increase alertness and general activity, and improve moods.

</p>

[Weskid]

<p>

Seriously though, I have wondered if your application is read early in the process, are you more or less likely to be admitted?

</p>

<p>Well, according to the book The Gatekeepers (written about ten years ago about admissions at Wesleyan), the answer is more likely, or at least it was that year. They had been admitting too many people earlier, so they had to get stricter later (all within the ED round). Tough luck for those who happened to get read later!</p>

[je_ne_sais_quoi]

<p>That’s interesting, Weskid. I thought it might work the opposite way. Perhaps admissions officers would want to see what else was out there before putting many in the “yes” pile, employing the “don’t marry the first one you kiss” strategy. Do colleges typically read over all applications before deciding on any of them? Would you recommend The Gatekeepers?</p>

[nngmm]

<p>My guess would be that being read earlier is an advantage. The admissions officer is probably less tired of reading “How I Save the World One Day at a Time” essays, and is probably more likely to be impressed by awards/accomplishments before he so 1000 apps with the same ones.</p>

<p>I bet it’s kind of like looking at the prom pictures on the facebook - at first you are really curious and impressed, but after an hour or so of flipping through them, they all look the same, and it’s all a blur ;)…</p>

[nngmm]

<p>je<em>ne</em>sais_quoi, Gatekeepers is a fun book. Definitely recommended.</p>

[Papa_Chicken]

<p>if job recruiting for fresh college grads is any parallel, I’d definitely say that the early bird gets the worm. In my case running a recruiting effort this year, the applications that came in early or were otherwise “on top of the pile” captured my anticipation the most, and I definitely put much effort into placing them relative to lower-pile applicants reviewed weeks later.</p>

<p>with what I’d imagine as a very orchestrated review process for college admissions, I’m not sure how an applicant could influence their application to be read early, though…accept in the case of EA/ED.</p>

[nngmm]

<p>

with what I’d imagine as a very orchestrated review process for college admissions, I’m not sure how an applicant could influence their application to be read early, though…accept in the case of EA/ED.

</p>

<p>I am sure that at rolling admissions schools early applicants get a huge leg up by applying early.</p>

[Papa_Chicken]

<p>I think you are right nngmm…and the dynamic mentioned by Weskid in Gatekeepers might be similar, now that I recall that book (which was definitely worth the read)…even within a non-rolling school like Wesleyan, the ED round was “expended” earlier in the ED process whereby once earlier-reviewed candidates within the ED round where Id’d, it was hard to displace them with later-reviewed candidates. Perhaps the same dynamic as my recruiting effort mentioned above…had a definite application due date (that is, not rolling) but earlier-reviewed candidates with acceptable credentials were most favorably treated.</p>

[bingle]

<p>We toured the northeast last week - it was gorgeous! Seeing a campus on a sunny spring day when lots of kids are out around the quad having a good time gives a very positive impressions. If we’d visited on a dreary, soggy day, I suspect we wouldn’t have like as many schools.</p>

<p>SoCal gets the edge again:) At least as long as the smog isn’t too bad…</p>

<p>-Alison</p>

[bomgeedad]

<p>The concluding paragraph of the paper</p>

<p>“If cloudcover, an unstable irrelevant and unavoidable cue is capable of
influencing the weighting of attributes on the part of experts working in natural
conditions, it is hard to imagine a situation where human judgment could be free of such
influences. Hopefully these results will help convince everyday decision makers what an
overwhelming amount of evidence has indicated for over 50 years, that they should rely
less on fallible subjective judgment and more on simple statistical formulas.”</p>

<p>This is not something that a lot of people of cc would be willing to admit.</p>

[nngmm]

<p>bomgeedad,</p>

<p>The problem is that there is no good enough objective statistical formula that can be used.</p>

[1of42]

<p>bingle: I visited CMU in the summer and loved it. Went back in October for an interview, and it dropped straight to the bottom of my list. Pittsburgh in late fall… dreary.</p>