Here is a clue about how the admisssions committee does reviews on applications:
1. Our first step each year is to establish a universe of academically prepared individuals within the pool of candidates who file initial applications with us. This year, it looks like we will be working with approximately 12,000 applications. The initial screening step is based largely, but not exclusively, upon quantitative data such as academic performance at the undergraduate, postbaccalaureate and graduate levels, MCAT scores, and academic rank of the educational institution(s). Various aspects of life history are also considered. In recent years we have had approximately 7,500 applications pass this initial screen and move on to additional review and consideration.
2. Next, we review the remaining folders in even greater detail, struggling to identify the candidates with special or unusual characteristics that suggest they may be particularly well suited to attending our medical school. Of the approximately 7,500 applicants reviewed at this level, we have capacity to interview only about 1,000, so we are forced to make many arbitrary and subjective decisions. Our focus is on a comprehensive, holistic evaluation of each applicant, incorporating academic and nonacademic factors in a highly individualized review. Once again, it is extremely unusual for a decision to be made on the basis of only 1 factor. Rather, these decisions reflect our sense of the overall portfolio.
3. After interview the folders are reviewed yet again, this time with the interviewers report providing important, but not necessarily determinative, guidance in our final decision about acceptance. By this stage of the process each applicant folder has been scrutinized and discussed by no fewer than 8 members of the Committee on Admissions.
but who knows
