This is the student reader reviewing your application. Yes, seriously.
The R1 admissions process is well and truly entering the interview stages. My bet is that most of the B schools have maybe 20 or 70 or maybe more student readers right now giving the applications a first pass. This number will vary by the size of the school. Each student reader probably has 50 applications to read. Each application probably takes an hour of reading time. The student readers will also have been given a deadline to get their application reading done by. Some of the student readers will have done all their readings early. However, since student readers are first and foremost students, I reckon most of the kids will be getting their readings in at or near the deadline. Hence, if the school's interview invite policy is determined by early readings of an application, an early interview invite is probably just indicative of how proactive your application's student reader has been.
So I reckon the real worry is not that the your application is already read and rejected. Oh, no. Rather, I think the real worry is whether your application gets read at all. I mean, think of the deadline for the student readers... and all those 80 applications they have to get through (Yes, I've just given them another 30 on top of the 50). On top of these applications, they have school work, partying, clubs and recruitment to fit in. Plus, how many applications can a person read without getting bored and falling asleep. The questions we should be asking ourselves should not be about the quality of our applications. Instead, I think they should be along the lines of, is that career goals essay going to hold up to being skim read on the morning of the readers' deadline by someone completely hung over (and possibly still drunk) ?
| Follow any responses to this entry through the |
