Admissions FAQ: Who Actually Makes the Admissions Decision?
Short answer: It depends!
One of the things I love most in my professional life is getting to talk in front of an audience1, especially if that audience is high school students and their parents. I’ve spent years and years giving talks about how to approach a college search, the ins-and-outs of college admissions, the basics of financial aid, and more. Over the years, I’ve had a lot of smart parents and students ask me really good questions that have helped me better understand which parts of this whole process seem the most confusing or least transparent.
I’ve decided to take some of these questions and start an FAQ series here at College Sanity, starting with this excellent question I got at a local high school’s college info night last year:
“Who actually reads applications? Like, who gets to make the choice if a student is admitted or waitlisted?”
The short answer for this question (and so many others when it comes to admissions) is: It depends!
The longer answer is that it depends on a number of factors including institutional selectivity, admissions criteria, size of applicant pool, institutional admissions staffing model, and some special circumstances where the rules might change a little bit.
Let’s talk about some of the models:
The Auto Admit Process
There are some schools (more than you might think!) where the admissions decision is likely made automatically by the school’s admissions or student information software system. Here’s how it worked when I was an admissions counselor at the University of Arizona2:
The higher ups in the enrollment management area would set our admissions parameters for the year (minimum GPA/minimum test scores, high school curriculum requirements) and work with our tech people to create an algorithm that would give each applicant a numerical score based on their high school transcript and test scores.
When a student submitted their application materials, someone called a transcript evaluator would enter classes, grades, class rank, and test scores into the system. They would check that the student had the 16 required classes either complete or in-progress and mark the file complete.
The complete applications would then get a score (I can’t remember the exact scores, so these are just examples) that would put them into one of the following categories:
260 or above: Admissions into the Honors College, eligible for merit scholarship (Out of state student)
250+: Admissions into the Honors College, eligible for merit scholarship (in state student)
215+: Admit (out of state)
210+ Admit (in-state)
190-209: Manual review: Went to the admissions counselor for that territory to review and make admissions decision
Under 190: Deny
There are other versions of auto admit models as well. Some schools have it set to a particular GPA or class rank, so that everyone with above a 3.0 or in the top 10% of their class get that acceptance without having to have an individual review it.
The schools that do primarily auto admitting will likely have a few things in common: they are not highly selective (remember: this DOES NOT mean that they aren’t great schools… selectivity isn’t a proxy for quality), they don’t require admissions essays or letters of recommendation, they may be large schools that get tens of thousands of applications a year, and they don’t promise to give “holistic review” when they talk about their admissions criteria or process.
Admissions Counselors
Some schools (often smaller and/or less selective) may have the majority of their applications read by their full-time admissions staff. Admissions counselors might be assigned to read applications by geographical territory or program/major. Some might specialize in first year students while others get the transfer students. In this model, the admissions counselors will have been trained on how to read files, what the enrollment goals are for the institution, and what the general internal parameters are for admissions (e.g. students with a GPA above a 3.0 are a presumed yes, unless there is a significant concern).
Sometimes schools might use a “one yes/ two no” approach wherein an individual counselor can make the decision to admit the student without anyone else reviewing the application but if they flag a student for denial, the file than gets sent to another counselor for review. If they both opt to deny, the student is denied. If the vote is split, it might go to the director of admissions or an admissions committee for further review.
Admissions Readers
Some schools (often selective schools that receive a high volume of applications) hire people called admissions readers to help filter their applicant pool. An admissions reader is different from an admissions counselor because their sole job is to read application materials, so they don’t do the recruitment activities, travel, and meeting with prospective students and parents that an admissions counselor usually does.
An admissions reader may be a full or part-time employee, but they are often temporary or contracted for a portion of the year. They may or may not be alumni of the institution, or former admissions counselors or high school counselors, or have other experience that trains them to read critically and to handle confidential information.
An admissions reader is unlikely to be the person who makes the actual final admissions decision, however. More commonly, they’ll read the application materials, write a brief summary and/or score it based on an institutionally created rubric, and perhaps make a recommendation to admit, waitlist, defer, or deny the student. The file will then generally go to an admissions committee for final decision, though the committee may prioritize applications above a certain score or that have been flagged as admissible. Some schools may have each file read by more than one reader before going to the committee.
Admissions Committees
At some schools, every file may go to the admissions committee. At others, it may only be applications that require additional discussion or review (for example: if three readers read it and arrived at different scores or recommendations). A common approach would be that one member of the committee would present the file, summarize the applicant, and note what would make the student a good candidate for admissions or any concerns or hesitations they might have. The other members of the committee would then get a chance to ask questions or share their opinion and then it is put to a vote.
At highly selective schools, the truth is that almost everyone who is brought before the committee is likely going to have stellar academics so the discussion might not be as much about things like GPA or test scores as much as what makes the candidate unique, have they already admitted 12 other tuba players from the midwest and do they need more, how many students from their high school have they admitted this year or in the recent past, and what is the student’s long term potential for greatness (e.g. are they going to be a rich and famous alum someday? Not that they would likely put it in those crass of terms…)
The Role of Faculty
College and university faculty often don’t play a role in the admissions process (though some schools may have a faculty representative on the admissions committee). The major exception to this is for academic programs that have limited space and require subject matter expertise to assess applicants. This is usually in the fine and performing arts realm, where an audition or portfolio review conducted by the faculty can play a significant role in the admissions process. At one of my prior schools, for example, the admissions office would get a list from the dance department with the 10-20 students they wanted to offer spots to and we would code them as a dance admit and send them their acceptance letter. For the students who applied to be in the dance program but weren’t selected by the faculty, we could still admit them to the school as a general admit but wouldn’t be able to offer them enrollment in the dance department.
Special Circumstances
There are a few circumstances where an application might go through a special review process, which may include bypassing the normal admissions processes at an institution:
Recruited athletes: As I mentioned, I was an admissions counselor at the University of Arizona, which is a D1 school with some very high profile sports. When I had a recruited athlete (in basketball, for example) who didn’t meet the auto-admit criteria, they would not come to me for review and would instead go directly to the director of admissions who would work with the athletic department to address any admissions obstacles
Connected applicants: Some schools may have a process (formal or otherwise) to review applicants who are either themselves high profile or connected to someone who is either high profile or has a higher degree of status within the institution itself. For example, at one school where I worked, the child of the college’s president was an applicant and so the director of admissions reviewed the file instead of the admissions counselor, with the argument being that the director would have more capital to say “no” than a 22 year old new employee of the college who wouldn’t want the president to be mad at them.
Child prodigies: Okay, this is rare but it does happen! I had a friend who was an admissions officer at a four year school that had a 12 year old (who had already completed high school and an associate’s degree) apply. The kid had perfect grades so clearly met the admissions standard but they got a special review that involved legal counsel and others at the school to help sort through issues like housing (could the 12 year old live on campus if they wanted to?), campus safety (what are the rules around a minor handling chemicals in the chemistry lab?), and how to prep faculty for the fact that they’d have a pre-teen in their 300 level class.
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While I can’t promise you’ll always know who is going to read your/your kid’s application, I can assure that there are still humans involved in the process, especially for schools that ask for essays or other supplemental materials, and that they are generally hoping to be excited by the students they meet in those files as they build their next class.
As always, feel free to hit me with any questions you might have in the comments!
I’m great on Zoom too, so if you ever need a speaker for a college night event …
Please note that this was a while ago, so I can’t confirm that this is how the process is still done there