Admissions Half-Way Update
Estimated reading time: 2 Minutes
The initial admissions stage is now complete and things are slightly less busy in the Admissions Team, which gives me time to update you on the admissions process.
Just as I predicted in my last post the last few weeks have been very busy ones; as expected we received the majority of our applications on the deadline and in even greater number than last year. So although we on the one hand are very pleased at the volume and quality of applications, we have on the other hand also worked very hard to ensure a fair and thorough assessment of every application.
Initially, all applications were collated by the University Graduate Admissions Office, which also checks if every application is complete and whether the documentation submitted meets the university standard. The complete applications are then passed on to us, after which we print out every application and assign them to our academic assessors who are all academic faculty at the University. The applications are subsequently discussed in weekly, often rather lengthy, admissions meetings. This all involves quite a bit of paperwork, printing and entering data into spreadsheets so as you can imagine we have had rather sore wrists for the last weeks.
It has however been a good process and the applications that meet and exceed our entry requirements are being identified. Currently we are in the midst of the second assessment stage where the applications will be academically assessed by a different group of academics than the ones involved with the first assessment. When all academic assessments are complete a final admissions meeting will be held to discuss which offers should be made.
We are however not at that stage yet. No final decisions have been made and will not be made until March. You should therefore not worry or expect to hear from us before then.
Generally the quality has been very high this year and it will be tough to select the 60 candidates for our next class. Again this year we have a very international application field with representation from 95 countries. So we feel very confident that next year will see another strong class at the Blavatnik School of Government and we are becoming increasingly excited to find out who we will be lucky enough to have with us.
Just as I predicted in my last post the last few weeks have been very busy ones; as expected we received the majority of our applications on the deadline and in even greater number than last year. So although we on the one hand are very pleased at the volume and quality of applications, we have on the other hand also worked very hard to ensure a fair and thorough assessment of every application.
Initially, all applications were collated by the University Graduate Admissions Office, which also checks if every application is complete and whether the documentation submitted meets the university standard. The complete applications are then passed on to us, after which we print out every application and assign them to our academic assessors who are all academic faculty at the University. The applications are subsequently discussed in weekly, often rather lengthy, admissions meetings. This all involves quite a bit of paperwork, printing and entering data into spreadsheets so as you can imagine we have had rather sore wrists for the last weeks.
It has however been a good process and the applications that meet and exceed our entry requirements are being identified. Currently we are in the midst of the second assessment stage where the applications will be academically assessed by a different group of academics than the ones involved with the first assessment. When all academic assessments are complete a final admissions meeting will be held to discuss which offers should be made.
We are however not at that stage yet. No final decisions have been made and will not be made until March. You should therefore not worry or expect to hear from us before then.
Generally the quality has been very high this year and it will be tough to select the 60 candidates for our next class. Again this year we have a very international application field with representation from 95 countries. So we feel very confident that next year will see another strong class at the Blavatnik School of Government and we are becoming increasingly excited to find out who we will be lucky enough to have with us.