Appendix 4: Applicant Review and Ranking Procedure
Updated: August 4th, 2011
Berkeley: Office of the Dean of the Graduate Division
September 16, 2002
To: Chairs of Departments and Head Graduate Advisers
From: Joseph J. Duggan, Associate Dean
Re: Applicant Review and Ranking Procedure
Rankings provide one of the few objective measures of why a department recommends admission or denial for a particular candidate. The applicant’s rank enables the Graduate Division to be quite specific about the faculty’s judgment of an individual’s qualifications compared with competing applicants. If a disappointed candidate takes legal action or asks for a detailed explanation, the rankings help substantiate the department’s recommendation. For these reasons, departments must rank all applicants, even those who are clearly unacceptable.
The Graduate Division maintains a file of descriptions of the departmental procedures used to evaluate applicants for admission. We review the departmental procedures to assure that the fairness of the admissions process can be documented. We also use the information to respond to candidates who have been denied and who wish further information on the process. We last updated our information in 1999 and would again like to review your procedures.
Please send to Betsy Livak, Director, Graduate Admissions, a complete description of your applicant review and ranking process by November 15, 2002. Please include the following:
• a list of your admissions criteria
• the relative weights given to these criteria
• an approximate schedule of the review cycle
• the ranking system used
• a brief description of your committee membership as well as how the department selects the committee members
• a sample of any notification letters routinely used
• your GRE requirements (time frame, general or subject, all applicants or domestic only, etc.)
You may wish to refer to “Ranking of applicants” and “Methods of ranking” in the Admissions section of the Graduate Adviser’s Handbook for a description of the acceptable methods to rank applicants. Departments that use direct comparison ranking must rank individually those applicants who fall just above and below the cutoff point for admission. Rank in set need be given only for the rank set in which the cutoff point occurred. There is no need to individually rank the applicants in the highest and lowest groups.
If your review procedures or ranking system change at any time, please remember to provide us with a copy of the updated information.
cc: Graduate Assistants
See All Topics in the Category: Admissions Appendices, Guide to Graduate Policy
