At T20 universities and LACs, what percentage of apps do you think go to committee? In a recent NPR story, only 15% went to committee at Amherst. The rest of the decisions were already made by small groups of two or three readers. Anyone know if this is typical? Or if it’s more typical to have a much larger percent brought to committee?
I think that Amherst number came from a book that was all about Amherst’s admissions process. There are so many different ways colleges can handle the application process. 15% seems low, albeit efficient. There’s no way a committee of ten or twelve can spend ten minutes each on thousands of applications.
That number came from an interview that NPR did in 2011.
I don’t know anything beyond wants been in various articles, interviews, books, etc., but would expect the number going to committee has probably decreased as number of apps has increased. The admissions process is also dynamic in the sense that a given school seems to change how they do things with some regularity. It seems many schools are using external, part-time readers as well.
Wesleyan used to have two readers read each app separately, and apps would go to committee only if those two readers disagreed…I don’t know what % went to committee though.
Just to throw some numbers out, even 25% going to committee at an LAC that gets 9,000 apps seems high. If the committee spends 5 minutes on each of those 2,250 apps that is still 188 hours in committee which is around 3 weeks of long days. I think the large majority of admissions decisions are being decided by less than a handful of people.
@Mwfan1921 thanks. I’m trying to read the tea leaves over here. S19 sent an update to one of his reaches last week. He sent it directly to the AO he’s met and copied the official email where updates are supposed to be sent. She just emailed him back with a nice note and said she will make sure the committee gets his email and his update. Hoping it’s a positive sign. I mean she didn’t have to email back at all, right? Lol. The end of the month needs to get here already…
Hugs @homerdog. The waiting is the hardest part!
I also think the vast majority of decisions have already been made. We’re officially in our “black out” period for Cornell. No more contact with students and no more reports, until decisions are released. It started March 1.
@momofsenior1 That’s interesting. Did Cornell actually send an email saying there’s a black out period. (The school I’m talking about above is not Cornell just fyi)
Yep. Cornell sends an email to all their alumni volunteers at the end of February reminding us to no longer schedule meetings and that 3/1 is the last day to send in any reports… If students contact us, we are not permitted to respond.
Obviously this is Cornell specific but my understanding is that there is an Ivy wide black out and moratorium period. Ivy release day is 3/28 this cycle, decisions are released to committee members on 3/30, and then we’re allowed to offer congratulations to students we were assigned and met.
Here is a 2 year old article on the process at Penn, although they don’t say the proportion going to full committee review. https://www.insidehighered.com/admissions/article/2017/06/12/some-colleges-adopt-new-committee-based-system-doing-first-review
@Mwfan1921 I’ve seen that. Not many schools do it that way. Just a handful. Two people actually read the app together in that process. It’s supposed to cut down on apps going to committee.
Here’s an article about Lehigh: https://thebrownandwhite.com/2015/03/26/admission-decisions-personal-process/
Also a few years old and they don’t say the proportion going to full committee but it’s only when there is disagreement amongst the initial reviewers.
I think this is so interesting. Schools shoot for a balanced class so I don’t understand how they get balance when so many kids are admitted without committee. There must be some spreadsheet somewhere that lists certain traits of the kids accepted before committee meetings (music kids, URM, first gen, etc) to know where they stand as they fill in what they need towards the end of the process.
^^Agree this is so interesting. The other part about the balance is the financial aid piece. All schools have an annual fin aid budget and can’t go over that…it’s not like they can just go into the endowment or take money from elsewhere if they go over.
Seems like fin aid has to be tracked as they go along, they obviously have to balance full pays, partial pays and full rides. So how are need blind schools doing this? Are they need blind for just the first pass through? Or do they assess fin aid once the close-to-final determinations have been made and make adjustments as needed? Or something else?..there are probably many ways schools are doing this, but would be enlightening to know the details.
@Mwfan1921 Yeah. There’s only one time that I’m glad we are full pay and it’s when S19’s app is in committee and they aren’t looking to give out any more money!
I think most schools have some play there.
About 6,000 goes to 1 Commitee for Yale. Approx 2,250 are admitted from that pool.
My understanding is there is “Chinese wall” between FA and admissions, so the decisions are indeed need blind. I suspect though that with the soft quotas on legacies and the large number of admits from affluent feeder schools, they have a pretty good idea on the overall financial profile of the admitted class. There must be a “range” for the FA budgeted each year which they can pretty safely predict based on historical data on class profiles. I also suspect that LAC’s with smaller admitted classes have a greater challenge in meeting their FA budget as deviations from working assumptions can have a bigger impact when working with smaller numbers. They do have a fudge factor that HYPS do not have, they can vary the generosity of aid by manipulating overall aid and the mix of aid between grant, loans, work/study, etc… Also not all need blind schools are 100% need met, so schools in that category can admit students and not offer sufficient FA.
And then add on the truth that not everyone accepts their offer…so they can only do so much to make a class exactly how they want it.
I wonder the interview happens before or after the file goes to the committee.
@BKSquared According to Yale’s latest CDS, about 2300 were accepted total and 700-ish were SCEA so that means only 1600 admitted RD. And 32,000 applications were in the RD round so 6,000 is about 20%. If I’m understanding your post correctly, then no one got accepted unless they went through the committee.
@coolweather Well, interviewers had deadlines in mid-Feb for most schools I keep reading how interviews really don’t mean that much. If that’s the deadline, then all apps going to committee would include the interview.