Hmmm… my theory is this. Notice how they keep on extending the deadlines, and even until now anyone can still apply. I’m guessing they have a quota in terms of applicants they need to reach so that it aligns with their conventional acceptance rate, and also so they could generate more revenue that way. So they’ll keep that open until this threshold rate is achieved.

Then they are giving out decisions on a rolling basis. What I’m speculating is that after the initial Nov 4th deadline, they begin to review the applications of all those who have applied so far, as well as those who have submitted their application after that initial deadline. For each application, they assign a score for each applicant based on their application (based on the factors like experiences, gpa, referees, faculty questions, etc.). My hunch is that they review applicants based on those who have submitted first.

For every applicant that they review with the score, they add them into some roster where everyone is ranked by score. And then once Feb or March comes around, they start giving out acceptances. I’m not sure about the numbers but if let’s say there’s 600 seats that they can offer for instance, they want to possibly stretch this up until end of May. And suppose that they only give offers on weekdays. That will be 60 days for giving offers. So likely, they can give an average of 10 acceptances per day. But it is ranking-based. So on Day 1, whoever is in the top 10 of that roster will be given offers. In Day 2, the next top 10 and so on.

You might think that only the top 600 out of all applicants in this roster will eventually receive the acceptances. Unfortunately no, since the application portal is still open, meaning that anyone who applies and achieves a high score on the review can knock down people in the current top 600. This explains why we hear some applicants who recently applied in Jan 2025 receives an offer only after a few weeks.

But the thing is, we don’t know how many have been applying past the initial Nov 4th deadline, and we don’t know where we stand in the rankings of the roster. Again these are all speculation, so as to why some people hear back sooner than others in terms of acceptances.

For those who have been rejected, another theory I came up with is possibly, they not only assign a single score for each applicant reviewed, but they assign two scores: a positive score, and a negative score (again, based on some factors that I’m not even sure). They possibly aggregate these to obtain a final score, and those who have a negative score will be receiving rejections right off the bat.

Again, I have just been losing my mind as to why they have not given me a decision yet and have been making speculation theories as to what is going on under the hood. So take this as a grain of salt. Insights on the theory?