hello all, i've been following this thread for a few days now and i thought i should let yall know that the admissions committee just announced that decisions will be made "on or around march 12th." (i have a feeling we will be punctual this year.)
as someone on the admissions committee, i can answer a few questions regarding the process. one question that seems to pop up all the time is whether decisions are made on a rolling basis and the answer is no; the selection process only begins when all interviews are completed. i would venture a guess that by now almost all decisions have already been made because this year's process went very smoothly thanks to the new system we are using.
regarding student vs. faculty interviewers: it has become apparent over the years that student interviewers are actually a lot tougher in reviewing people than faculty members. officially, their opinions are weighed just as heavily as the faculty. but i can tell you from experience that the committee tends to rely on the student evaluations a little bit more because they are usually more thorough than the faculty's. faculty members typically write one-liners, while students often write paragraphs.
if someone is given two wildly different scores by both their interviewers, the application is looked at more closely. usually it is simply a difference in standard (someone's 7/10 is some else's 9/10) and a decision gets made on who was being more reasonable, perhaps neither were, and a new opinion is thrown into the pot.
i hope i shed some light on the process, if you have any more questions, feel free to PM me, i can't say i'll be around often to check this thread again though i'll try.
but then again, remember that this is always a fluid process...
Any first-year student interviewers here?
