Whew, just got home from the 10/22 interview day. Man, that was a long day. Pretty good impression of the place, they seemed honest yet bragged about the school's stats when applicable.
They also explained the entire admission process post interview. Holy man, is that complicated. Let me see if I remember what they said.
1) You interview
2) Your interviewer writes you an 'LOR' and this gets placed next your other LORS, only this one is slightly more heavily weighed, but not terrible so.
3) Five people on the adcom get your files and review your entire application in detail over the course of a week
4) The 20 person adcom committee meets the following week and the 5 people that know your application are brought forward.
5) They talk amongst themselves for a moment and find out which one of them likes your application the best. Then they find out which one of the 5 members dislikes your application the most
6) The person that likes you the most turns to the adcom talks about your application in detail for several minutes. They will advocate for your acceptance and talk about why you are awesome.
7) The person that thinks your application is bad will talk negatively about your application for a few minutes. They will say why you should not be accepted or why you are not qualified.
8) Other members of the adcom now talk about you and ask questions to other members of the adcom. There is much debate and discussion out loud.
9) There is a massive vote, all 20 members of the committee will vote on their final decision. They all rate you on a 0-100 scale.
10) All scores are tallied. Your cumulative average score out of one hundred is calculated and this number will either get you accepted, denied, or determine your position on the waitlist.
😱
Yea, that's pretty intense. Now I know why it takes 6 weeks to hear back.
Is it common for UW to send interview invitations to applicants whose files aren't complete? I'm missing a non-faculty letter, but I got an invite anyway... I don't think I'll be able to get a non-faculty letter, since all four of my rec writers are technically faculty and I don't know of anyone else I'd be comfortable getting a letter from. Should I just withdraw, or does the fact that they gave me an interview mean they're willing to overlook this??
I don't think UW uses LORs in deciding interview spots. I think they only require/look at LORS at the post-interview adcom review