CA: Can you explain how the admissions process unfolds, from the moment that the applicant hits submit to the issue of a decision? How many reads does it get? Who is doing the reads? Does the committee convene as a group in the case of a tie, or in every case? How does the interview play into that?
BD: We have three application rounds. We do not look at applications until after a deadline passes. It doesn’t really advantage you to submit far in advance of the deadline. If you submit two weeks before the deadline, we are not going to look at the application until after the deadline anyway.
I wouldn’t wait until the very last minute because you want to make sure you are not feeling rushed at the end. But applying early or submitting earlier will not get you reviewed earlier. We will look at everybody all together, so don’t make timing assumptions based on when you submit or how far in advance of the deadline you submit.
After the deadline, we will do whatever clean-up we need to make sure files are complete, so that we have all the materials from everybody. We will follow up with candidates to the extent that files are incomplete. Then we have an initial sit down where we just go through all the files very quickly just to get a sense, looking at the statistics, of what the averages are. Then we go through each of the files very, very rapid fire, to get a sense of the pool. We then break out the files in terms of reading.
We have 13 or 14 members or our admissions committee. Most members are full-time admissions officers at the School of Management. We also have three contract readers we have used for a number of years. They are like additional committee members. They are with us for the entire season, and sometimes do interviews, and other admissions tasks.
We do that initial triage of files. We start with a review process. Every file is reviewed twice by two different members of the admissions committee; that happens soon after the deadline. Each file is reviewed independently. The second person does not know what the first person thought. We want to make sure these are independent judgments. Then we convene as a committee to talk about who to invite to interview.
Years ago it used to be that people would invite people to interview, as they reviewed the files. We found that it is easier to convene the group together to talk collectively about who to invite and to make those judgements in committee.
Then those interviews will happen. After that we will get together again as a committee to make the final decision on candidates. Not everybody is interviewed. Close to a quarter of the people who apply are invited to interview. The rest get a decision without the interview. For those who are interviewed, they will come back to committee for a decision and we will incorporate the interview into the evaluation.
It is not as simple as if you do well in your interview you are in, if you don’t do well you are not. It is just another data point that we use to make the final decision.
Then we will release the decisions at the end of the round. There is usual a process of a couple of months from the deadline to the decision release.
Keep going to learn more about admissions.
