B1.9 Documentation of Admission Decisions
Updated: May 25th, 2011
Admission records, including ranking procedures for each cohort, should be retained for those admitted and denied for at least two admission cycles. Such records might include letters of recommendation, documents used by faculty evaluators, computations of applicant scores or ranks, etc. The Graduate Division can compile most of the statistical information needed to respond to legal investigations, but departments alone have information on the particular strengths and weaknesses of individual applicants, such as the evaluation of letters of recommendation and the results of interviews. Federal agencies, for example, require the University to summarize the qualifications of successful as well as unsuccessful applicants in order to demonstrate that the complainant’s qualifications were below the level of those admitted for a particular program and semester, according to the department’s criteria for evaluation. Keeping admission data for two or more years may seem cumbersome for departments, but it is relatively cheap insurance against the need to reconstruct admission decisions for a year’s worth of applicants.
See All Topics in the Category: B. Admission, Guide to Graduate Policy
