What if your essay is the first one read? % ranking?

[Guest esop]

Does anyone think that there is a disadvantage to having your essay read first before everyone's else? DO you think there's a bias, in that the first essay will be conisdered the standard or something like that, and then the rest are compared to it?

 

Im just wondering if Mac does the following: 1) Read all the essays first, then assign rankings or 2) read the first essay, assign it a value of 50%, and then assign the other essays accordingly based on the first essay....kinda like the MCAT, where your scores are based on everyone's elses where 8 is the average....

 

hmm..now that I think about it, 2) is related to 1)

[Guest Carolyn]

It really depends on the assessor but we were encouraged to read all the essays through quickly and then go through each one with a fine tooth comb to come up with a ranking between 1 and 7. The admissions chair also states it is okay to give a 7/10 to 29/30 essays or 1/30 (i.e. we each read 30 essays) if you really feel that is appropriate - that is the scores do not need to be distributed evenly. Later the total scores from the three assessors are used to develop your % ranking.

 

Hope that helps.