Lemme see if I can do some quick back of the envelope calculations.
Staff - Lets say there's 5 full time administrative staff in the admissions department at $40000 a year, so $200,000 there. Let's say the dean and assistant dean are physicians, making $150,000 a year. Let's also say that they only spend half their time doing admissions work and the other half of their time doing actual doctor stuff (which the hospital would be paying for as opposed to the school). So 150,000 x 2 / 2 = $150,000 for those two. Faculty interviewers: Let's say a school uses two faculty interviewers per student. On different days, it will be different interviewers, but it's basically equivalent to having two dedicated interviewers working full time for a 6 month interview period. Say they make $150000 a year, so 2 of them working for 6 months comes out to $150000. Student tour guides and interviewers are free. Any kind of facilities maintanence personel will be handled by the facilities management budget of the building, so it wouldn't be part of the admissions department budget. So total for staff - $500,000
Next let's consider interview day expenses. Let's say a school interviews 700 candidates in 70 interview dates of 10 applicants apiece. Lunch costs $8 per student, plus the department covers lunch for med students- let's say 5 med students come for free food, so $120 for lunch. Then let's say an extra $30 for coffee & donuts and stuff that the department provides. So food costs $150 per date, for a total $10,500 for the interview season.
Mailings- Let's say a school gets 5000 AMCAS applications. Now things can vary greatly but let's say that the school sends a viewbook by mail and the secondary application is electronic. Let's say that a viewbook is sent to to every applicant pre-secondary regardless of how competitive they are (which some schools may not necessarily do). To produce that viewbook, let's say that it costs $10000 to hire a company to take photographs of the school, students, facilities, and prepare the entire viewbook. Then every viewbook can cost upwards of $5 for printing costs (Giant, 20 page, full color brochures are expensive). So $25,000 for printing, and maybe another grand for shipping, storage, handling, and so on. Mailing, I know from schools that have sent me viewbooks that it costs about $3 to mail them, and that's just from Boston to Albany so the costs can go even higher, but $3 is good. So $15,000 for that. Large envelopes are about 50 cents apeice in bulk, and figure another $500 for lables and printing costs and that comes to $3000. So the total cost for sending everyone a viewbook comes to $53,000. Now, let's say there are 4000 completed secondaries filled out. The school sends a letter saying your application is complete. A single page in a small envelope. For postage, paper, and envelope and printing, figure 40 cents per letter. So $1,600 for that. Now, lets say that the school gives interview offers by mail to 700 applicants. Those letters can be bigger and have more stuff, let's say 50 cents apeice to send, so $350 there. Now of the 4000 completed secondary applications, 3700 will receive rejection letters, so another 40 cent letter there, so about 1500 bucks there. Acceptance packets lets say run a buck apeice for the 300 acceptances. So for these mailings, it comes to $3750, which we'll round to $4000 for things we forgot. Total for mailings is $57,000. Seeing how much viewbooks can cost it's not surprising that a great deal of discresion is shown when sending those out. Now, photocopies. Let's say that for every secondary completed applicant, 20 pages are copied for review purposes. Figure 5 cents a copy so a buck an applicant, for a total of $3000.
So the grand total is $561,500. Let's say the school gets $100 for every completed secondary, which in this case was 4000, so thats a net income of $400,000 and are this losing money. Note that even if none of the mailings were there, the application fees wouldn't even cover the cost of the personel required to do admissions. Granted, the OP was about BU who's theoritically getting $100 from 10,000 applicants compared to a made up situation with half as many applicants but is more representative of the numbers that most med schools get. I don't think the BU number is quite accurate either, as they only got 7700 last year, which is the largest in the country, but wouldn't just jump by 33% from year to year. Also, my calculations are probably overestimates, but I think that the part of the cost that makes up the largest chunk of the cost (the personel) is relatively accurate compared to the high variability of all the other stuff. So I do believe that most med schools are losing money on admissions or at best breaking even, but it doesn't make us forking over $100 for a peice of paper saying that we suck any easier 😛
