Calling all Kellogg Fall 2009 Applicants!

I’ve been quietly watching the forum over the past few days while waiting to find out my fate and the question of how/when applicants are reviewed still keeps coming up. So I thought I might add my own opinion in order to attempt to clarify (but most likely spur more discussion). I attended both an on and off campus info session and the adcom made several statements about the process. I have no reason to believe they weren’t being mostly forthright.



Adcom statements:
-Applications will only be reviewed when they are complete AND the deadline has passed
-An application is considered complete when Part I and II have been submitted AND when the interviewer has submitted the interview forms
-Completed applications are added to the pool of other completed applications and are reviewed in a RANDOM order
-Applicants are notified [practically] immediately once a decision has been finalized


My own interpretations/assumptions:

-Applicants whose interview assessment is completed prior to or early after the deadline for the round have a HIGHER PROBABILITY of hearing back EARLY because the pool of completed applications is small early on and therefore has a higher chance of being randomly selected
-Applicants whose interview assessment is completed well after the deadline for the round have a LOWER PROBABILITY of hearing back EARLY because the pool of completed applications is larger later on and therefore has a lower chance of being randomly selected
-(This is where it gets frustrating to those that interviewed early) Since there’s no “history” built into the system, for two applicants with completed apps, they have EQUAL chances of being reviewed at that current moment in time (even if one applicant interviewed just the day before while the other interviewed in September). This means that it is possible for a small number of people to have interviewed early, but not get randomly picked until very late
- On campus interviewers are more likely to be responsible and submit their end of the assessment quickly than are alumni interviewers
-Few international applicants have heard a decision because they tend to interview late and with alumni
-Finally, I suspect that technically everybody gets the dreaded “unknown” status as their state is being updated in the database. The only difference is that the accepted applicants get a call before system is officially updated and they stop incessantly checking the status page while the dinged candidate stumbles upon the much feared message during their frequent checking.

Sorry for the dissertation. Debate away.