Quote:
Originally Posted by Golden Rule
Well you have to make a decision, and the decision is ultimately not random. Again, in IO terms, we're talking about horizontal and vertical differentiation. There is some universal agreement in applicant quality (vertical), and then some disagreement (horizontal). For instance, some schools might put more weight on GRE scores and grades than others.
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I guess what I'm saying is that there may be situations in which the adcom acts more randomly. For example, if you have 5 spots left and 10 students are about similar, I think that sometimes they just sort of pick 5. I can't imagine they will sit there and spend a huge amount of time evaluating the differences between these last 10 applicants given that there profiles are "equal" (by equal, I guess I mean that the adcom is indifferent between the profiles or that the adcom thinks that they all have an equal shot at succeeding in the program). Especially considering that the adcoms only have certain information, and are constrained by the amount of time/effort they put in to trying to determine the differences amoung applicants.
I also believe this happens in job interviews. Sometimes you have 2 job applicants which appear equal from the interviewers perspective, and I think that maybe it's a 50 - 50 shot on who gets hired. In other words, if this interviewer had to pick an applicant 1000 times, they'd both be offered the job 500 times as the interviewer is essentially making the decision as if he/she was flipping a fair coin.
Again, I'm not trying to convince you that this is the case. I'm simply pointing out that that it's possible, and that in my opinion this actually does happen in admissions (as well as job offers).