Inside Graduate Admissions: Merit, Diversity, and Faculty Gatekeeping

"Inside Graduate Admissions" presents admissions from decision makers point of view, including thought-provoking episodes of committees debating the process, interviewing applicants, and grappling with borderline cases. Who ultimately makes the admit list reveals as much about how professors see themselves and each other as it does about how they view students. Professors in these programs say that they admit on merit, but they act on different meanings of the term. Disciplinary norms shape what counts as merit, as do professors ideas about intelligence and their aversions to risk, conflict, ambiguity, and change. Professors also say that they seek diversity, but Posselt shows that their good intentions don t translate into results. In fact, faculty weigh diversity in only a small fraction of admissions decisions. Often, they rely upon criteria that keep longstanding inequalities in place.

More equitable outcomes occur when admissions committees are themselves diverse and when members take a fresh look at inherited assumptions that affect their judgment. To help academic departments promote transparency and accountability, Posselt closes with concrete strategies to improve admissions review."