I often wonder the same, I didn't get into the 1st insight evening and the reason was the same: "didn't score high enough", but the application was basic with just a short cover letter (and maybe undergrad academics, can't remember). Do they just give a subjective rating out of a 100 or something.
Even more confusing since I was invited to the 2nd evening after 🤷♂️ IF everything is objectively good with an application, I think some of it legit comes down to who reads it and in what mood they are in
It is a subjective process not an objective one, even with all the good will and infrastructure/policy to put things in place to make the process as consistent and fair as possible. That is the thing about it being all about individual human beings - you can’t make it objective.
As I said to someone in one of the 1-2-1 calls recently, applications are like an art. Yes, there are general rules about what constitutes good art, but that ultimately people’s preferences do play out as to how that art is interpreted.
And the difference between how an application can be compared to the next could be down to the equivalent of an individual brush stroke in a painting.
To complete this crappy analogy (I love an analogy, but I am spectacular at coming up with dodgy ones!) is that a recruiter is looking at 1,000-3,000 painting that are hard to distinguish from one another. From a distance, they will look fairly identical and it’s only when you look up close at the specific details that you see differences that make you think one is better than the other.
The problem with this conversation is we can only see the “art” from a distance and we don’t have sight of every piece submitted. Therefore we make assumptions as to why one has been chosen over the other. But the reality is it’s usually over something we don’t see from the distance we are viewing things from.
And it is that opaqueness that is frustrating, especially to groups of people whose characteristics are usually geared to trying to work things out/problem solve/get an answer.
