Does anyone know any ADCOMS personally

[Docplaque]

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So does anyone know an adcom personally or maybe a student who has interviewed predents. Are there any stories about overconfident applicants who weren't granted admission or even a less than competive applicant to whom admission was granted. I was just curious. I think a lot of predents forget that ADCOMs are people too. With all these "what are my chances "posts they fail to understand that these are people looking at each individual applicants not just numbers on a page.

 

[threeblindmice]

You are right they do look at the person behind the numbers, but the numbers get you the interview.(some schools do weigh the personal statement more heavily to consider you for an interview but numbers are what most schools go by) There is no way to get around the fact that the majority of applications to a school are denied interviews. If you are lucky enough to get the interview then they will care about the person. The hard part is that you get less than an hour to demonstrate that personality. So yes if you really have the charm and are the type of person that people don't easily forget then that is to your advantage. However in most cases there aren't 60-100 that they interview that really got their attention. There might be ~40 out of 200+ that they really felt interviewed well and ~40 that interviewed poorly. That still leaves 20-60 spots to fill and ~150+ people left that they interviewed, so then they look more closely at those numbers and EC's of those 150. Sadly you can't escape the importance of those numbers.

 

[MrWilson]

^pretty much what they said. At one particular school from what I'm told, numbers get you the interview, and the interview is where you need to shine. At one particular school, I knew some that had in the past been on the admission committee. He told me the interview holds the most weight, which is typical at most schools. You need to be genuine, and be able to carry on a conversation. He told me of some cases where they had rock-star level applicants, but didn't know how to converse. Unfortunately for them, they weren't accepted.