Minutes for the GAC meeting, 1/27/2012
  • Review status (and a round of toasts to the GAC!)
    • 467 complete and assigned, 23 rejected due to low TOEFL, 16 rejected as incomplete.
      • 4 processed as off-cycle
      • 264 Admissible, sent for sector review
      • 199 Inadmissible, no further action.
      • 0 pending third review
  • Review rejected minority/female candidates
    • Possibly reconsider:
      • Ramya Mohan – confirmed with Wardle.
      • Revathi Jambunathan – confirmed with Willcox.
      • Caylee Johanson – Balakrishnan changed to 2 in meeting.
      • Andrea Palma Sorados – Balakrishnan changed to 2 in meeting.
      • Jagoda Worotynska – strong letters, GRE. confirmed with Willcox.
      • Nelly Gomez-Benitez – seeming strong GPA but brutal GRE. Weigel confirmed no.
    • Won't consider further
      • Chukwuka Mbagwu – GPA too low to consider
      • Arturo Ayala-Navarro – weak grades, GRE, letters. No aero connection.
      • Gerald Trotman – weak grades, GRE, letters. No aero connection.
      • LaMont Moore – weak grades, GRE, etc.
      • Tattiana Hernandez – low grades, GRE, weak letters.
      • Pengfei Meng – weak grades, coming in with two SM, little output.
      • Satarupa Mitra – low grades, dubious letters
    • From last meeting:
      • Dinesh Sivananda – letters were suspect. Attempts to verify the letters failed, but application not strong enough on its merits even if letters are genuine.
      • Adrian Bullock – action from last week was to check with Martinez-Sanchez. He confirmed no.
      • Eden Dahan – action from last week was to check with Miller. He confirmed no.
      • Edwin Gomez – action from last week was to check with Leveson and Balakrishnan. They confirmed no.
      • Nomana Hadi – rejection letter went out last week at Christine Ortiz' request.
  • Open house
    • Beth working on stream-lining open house.
    • Students will be told to make appointments with faculty before the open house, rather than on the day.
    • Poster session will still be up all day, staffed in the morning.
    • Luncheon shortened to an hour, no closing reception.
    • Beth will give them more information about the program at the morning breakfast.
    • GA^3 on track.
    • No answer on travel stipend yet : Beth to send numbers to Karen.
    • Paulo asked how many people come to the open house. Beth says that there are often conflicts with other open houses, so roughly 45 people have come in the past.
  • Sector meetings
    • Need to discuss GAC process during sector meeting.
    • See GAC Policy on sector meetings.
    • Karen will do her best to be present at all sector meetings. Jean is in the loop on scheduling.
  • Yield data
    • Karen has received data from sectors, working on finalising yield numbers.
    • Working on factoring TAs into the yield numbers. Karen observed we are probably underadmitting a little bit, affecting our ability to get TAs.
    • Emilio asked about dept-backed RAs, and Karen confirmed we will still do this.
    • Fellowships aren't an unalloyed joy. Possibly we will use fellowships to create multi-year offers. Can we use fellowships to better our admissions process?
    • Go ask ODGE what's up with taxes?
  • Any comments on the process, suggested changes for the future?
    • Reduce load on associate dept head, and consider having another vehicles person
    • Follow up with Harvard's process
    • If the GAC was just a go/no-go process, rather than numbers, it might go faster.
    • How hard would it be to be able to sort on the scores of individual reviewers, rather than aggregate
    • Could we add an unread button? Do the search terms have variables?
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