merper
It's so hard to judge how you did on these things. My group was very collaborative, but it was hard for me to get a word in at the beginning. I started talking on a couple occasions on a lull when it turned out that the person wasn't done speaking and had to back off. No one seemed offended by it, and it's common enough in a regular meeting, but I don't know if it came off looking bad. Eventually the group landed on my idea as the go to and I helped flesh out some of the details and helped connect it with a couple points others had brought up. We finished right on the buzzer and the one adcom in presence seemed to really love the idea. But I have no idea what she's grading on and the one on one was pretty short for me (though perhaps I just had a couple fewer questions).
All in all, unless there are sessions where the group crashes, I don't see how we can all get in. I don't know how she could remove 3, 2 or even 1 person from my group(unless it's me!). My other interviews were all less nerve wracking afterwards.
Think of it like this. For some schools, I think that the point of the application is to determine whether to grant you an interview or not, and if you do, your chances of being admitted ride completely on how that interview goes.
For Wharton, I think (totally just a guess) that the TBD is just another data point to your app, and as a whole they would review the entire app after the interview and then make decisions. I am guessing it works this way because I'm guessing that around 70-80% "pass" the TBD while only ~50% of interviewees are admitted.
That's probably true. I know Chicago pretty much said that they use the interview as another data point and they operate at roughly the same size as Wharton. However, it does make the wait all the more tense as an applicant.