Promotion and tenure considerations are equally important steps both for the faculty and institution. For faculty, it's a matter of being able to exercise academic freedom without the fear of repercussion and potentially losing the job. For institutions, it's a matter of how to keep and nourish the best candidates and avoid making a lifetime commitment with a wrong candidate. The key goals of the Promotion and Tenure (P&T) processes are to: (1) keep the processes fair and timely, (2) ensure faculty excellence, and (3) ensure that consistent standards are applied to every candidate during P&T evaluations. Most research focuses on developing effective strategies to evaluate faculty portfolios as well as what faculty should do to develop a good portfolio. However, the underlying processes to make promotion and tenure decisions are usually taken for granted. Many times a decision is going to be as good as the underlying process that was used to reach that decision. This paper focuses on the processes that are used to make promotion and tenure decisions, examines the potential flaws and weakness of those processes, and suggests the three P&T models. The paper also examines the existing processes in several universities across the United States. The review of their P&T processes suggests that in most universities in the United States, these processes are tilted towards either ensuring faculty excellence or applying consistent standards on all candidates. It further demonstrates how those processes can be configured to achieve the desired balance between ensuring faculty excellence and that consistent standards are applied to every candidate during the P&T processes.