Colleges >> Browse Articles >> Admission Advice

Colleges >> Browse Articles >> Inside Dean Flagel's Office

Who Really Reads Your Admissions Application?

I’ve been answering questions that seem to be wildly misled about who actually reads your application. One site refers regularly to the "ADCOMM" — admissions committee — likes it’s some alien entity that always acts the same way, and not thousands of individuals.

Questions like "how do admissions committees look at essays about my trip to Antarctica?" are almost as nutty as answers (and this is actually what was posted on one of these garbage advice sites), "ADCOMM’s don’t want to hear about your trips. They hear too many of those. Write about something else."

Oh PLEASE. There is absolutely no way to predict how any one subject will be read by the many many many different people who might make up decisions at different institutions. To understand that, here’s a quick review on how the admissions “committee” process works.

In 2002, my good friends at the CollegeBoard published a great review of admission processes called, "Admissions Decision-Making Models: How U.S. Institutions of Higher Education Select Undergraduate Students" (Rigol, 2002). It identified seven basic processes competitive institutions use to evaluate applications. The most selective will tend to start with two independent readers. If those two agree on their evaluation, one of them will take the file to the "ADCOMM". If they don’t, the application will often be referred to a third reader who will bring it to committee, or directly to the committee with both contrasting recommendations.

In that model, at least, every applicant does go to a committee, but only after screening by individuals. In most models, quite a few files never make it that far. Another prominent version has two readers, and the application only goes to committee if they disagree. At others, a single reader can decide within set parameters to admit or deny, and only brings an application to committee if it falls outside those parameters.

---