Shredder said:
haha yes thats a more appropriate analogy. again where is all of the money going--its not like students are getting subsidized tuition with it
The admissions office runs on the money collected by application fees. Certainly, you wouldn't expect tuition and endowment to cover those costs. There is the cost of the space occupied by the admissions office, the furnishing, electricity, housekeeping. There is the telephone and the receptionist who answers that phone when you call, yet again, with a question. There is the fax machine and the other electronic means that you use to communicate with the office. There is the Dean and the Dean's staff who promote the school to undergraduate institutions, those promotional materials, the cost of record keeping (how do we know what the mean gpa is without data analysts) meals and snacks for the interviewees, paper/printing/cataloging and storage of application records, the purchase of software & hardware needed to facilitate electronic applicaiton submissions. There are the labor, paper and postage costs associated with inviting applicants for interviews and informing them of the admission decision.
You couldn't pay faculty to do what they do as volunteers. Why does a urologist who can bill $$$ per hour spend 7 hours per week (often sometime long after the rest of his household is asleep) making decisions about invitations for interviews? Because there is a responsibility as a member of the academic community to help select the next generation of medical students. Others volunteer to review research protocols with the goal of protecting human subjects, others volunteer to serve on the tenure and promotion committee, or the student promotions committee, or to interview applicants to the medical school, or to serve on a search committee for a new hire.
The season lasts from early summer when you submit the AMCAS through mid-May when binding decisions are made by applicants who have offers of admission. At a place where only 2 waves of admission decisions go out, all things being equal you have as good a chance of being admitted if you interview on the last day of interviews as you do if you interview months earlier (although the earliest applicants tend to be stronger than those who submit with August MCATs).
