<p>Simply because someone makes an accusation of ‘age discrimination’ doesn’t make it true. I am sure anyone who got turned down for a position after an interview wants to always find something else to blame. Intelligence and grades are not the only factors which are assessed when being interviewed. Having your parents show up to question why you got turned down, certainly won’t change anyone’s opinion and shows a lack of maturity by the applicant who should be speaking for themselves when applying to any graduate program.</p>
<p>If the decision was based on a strict inherent age limit codified somewhere (i.e. a rule that said no student under XX age would be accepted), then there would likely be a case for age discrimination.</p>
<p>However, being rejected on the subjective basis that the applicant’s social and psychological maturity makes them a weaker candidate than the accepted candidates (and perhaps even weaker than many who were also rejected) is a judgment call of professionals that is not likely to be successfully challenged. Courts are extremely deferential to subjective decisions made by colleges and universities.</p>
<p>Time2 wrote:
“Simply because someone makes an accusation of ‘age discrimination’ doesn’t make it true.”</p>
<p>Indeed. Of course, that doesn’t make the accusation untrue, either. The problem here is that the university explicitly cited <em>age</em> as its reason for denying this student a spot in its program. And that’s illegal.</p>
<p>What we have is a concept that x number of chronological years serves as a proxy for something else. But, for what? For something tangible like height? Even then, age is a distinctly flawed metric, as all people of a certain age are not the same height. Is age really then just a proxy for something intangible, like “maturity” or “experience”? How do we measure such intangibles? </p>
<p>Experience can be measured in years. Employment applications and applications for admissions to educational institutions require certain specific amounts of it in certain specific areas. Had UIUC instead communicated that the student lacked a specific quantity of experience in a specific area, then her age itself is not necessarily the issue. </p>
<p>If, in fact, the most competitive applicants to that grad program consistently have stronger applications than she, then it may not be necessarily due to her age that she could be denied admission. If, however, the strongest admitted applicants had no greater academic accomplishments than her own (e.g. GRE scores, GPA, papers published, significant research, et cetera), then that’s a university illegally engaging in age discrimination. That’s a university courting an OCR complaint.</p>
<p>Universities are not required to quantify to each rejected candidate why they weren’t accepted, and trying to create such a standard would be folly in the extreme.</p>
<p>There is no tangible and objective standard for “maturity” (assuming that GPA and GRE scores are themselves objective, which is actually an arguable point) - it is a subjective matter, the epitome of academic discretion.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Those are minimum standards for consideration for admission, not a guarantee that all students who meet those standards will be admitted. There are far, far more qualified applicants to most graduate programs than can be accepted. Sifting through those applications, then, becomes a subjective debate among professors in the department in question.</p>
<p>
Not necessarily - she would need to prove that it was the numerical value of her age that was the issue, and that is a tall order especially when her evidence is limited to what she and her mother claim they heard.</p>
<p>The reality is that admissions to graduate programs is based as much or more on subjective judgments than on objective standards. Having one of the top-10 GPA’s among those admitted is no guarantee that you will get one of the ten available spots. Unless she has a smoking gun (in the form of a document indicating “17 is categorically too young”), it will be near impossible to prove to a jury that the criteria used for admission would have resulted in her acceptance if not for her age.</p>
<p>Again, however, it should be noted that the people turning her down for graduate study were the same ones who had been teaching and interacting with her for the past three years - it seems likely that none of them wanted her, either because she was not desirable as a student or else because the other applicants were just that much better.</p>
<p>there is also the possibility that , in addition to her age- i.e.lack of maturity- the grad program may have wanted “fresh blood” from another institution, instead of an undergraduate they were already familiar with. some grad schools have a [unwritten, but acknowledged] policy of not accepting UG students from their own school.</p>
<p>Universities have long used subjective measures to determine “fit”. Harvard (and others) used to reject Jews on that nebulous basis alone. Indeed, they have no obligation to justify their decisions, save those that elicit civil rights complaints. No assertion is made here as to whether this student was or was not qualified; the issue is that the university specifically cited age as its reason for rejecting her. According to the US Department of Education, that’s an adequate basis for filing an OCR complaint. </p>
<p>OCR this year ruled in a similar situation in favor of a younger-than-usual student, wherein that student’s university also cited age as its reason for denying admission to a program --and that university ultimately was found by OCR to have illegally discriminated.</p>
<p>Thank-you for the link, DoyleOwl. I suspect there might be another lawsuit if this proves to be similar to the case earlier this year where a student was denied an opportunity to travel abroad because of his age and the court ruled in his favor. Age discrimination is illegal. I guess we’ll wait and see how it all turns out…</p>
<p>@cosmicfish - That the profs under whom she completed her undergrad years would not take her on as a grad student is significant. </p>
<p>From the article at HuffPo:<br>
"My mother asked if young age in a student like me, who had received nothing but straight As in the last semesters of classes, should be considered an asset. The admission director responded with the question, “Why do you believe that young age should be considered positive for the application? To the contrary…”</p>
<p>“…nothing but straight As in the last semesters of classes…” begs the question:
Were her grades thus <em>lower</em> than that the rest of the time?</p>
<p>The admission director’s response is the smoking gun. Her age should be neither positive nor dispositive, according to the Age Discrimination Act of 1975.</p>
<p>Not much of a “smoking gun.”</p>
<p>From the Code of Federal Regulations implementing the age discrimination law:</p>
<p>A recipient is permitted to take an action otherwise prohibited by 110.10 <a href=“effectively,%20discriminating%20based%20on%20age”>/i</a> if the action reasonably takes into account age as a factor necessary to the normal operation or the achievement of any statutory objective of a program or activity. An action reasonably takes into account age as a factor necessary to the normal operation or the achievement of any statutory objective of a program or activity, if –</p>
<p>(a) Age is used as a measure or approximation of one or more other characteristics;</p>
<p>(b) The other characteristic or characteristics must be measured or approximated in order for the normal operation of the program or activity to continue, or to achieve any statutory objective of the program or activity;</p>
<p>(c) The other characteristic or characteristics can be reasonably measured or approximated by the use of age; and</p>
<p>(d) The other characteristic or characteristics are impractical to measure directly on an individual basis.*</p>
<p>If this ever goes to a lawsuit (which I really doubt it would), UIUC would easily argue that age here approximates for maturity and life experience, which are, again arguably, necessary to pursue research and practice in the field of psychology.</p>
<p>Being told you ‘lack experience’ isn’t an example of age discrimination. Of course, those are the words quoted by the rejected candidate. I would imagine what exactly they were told by the admissions office would be hard to prove in a court of law if it was something verbal.</p>
<p>As “evidence” of discrimination, the remarks of the admission director indeed are the smoking gun – assuming, of course, that the attribution is accurate.</p>
<p>The matter of age as a proxy for something else is not as simple to prove as one might think. The assertion that "age here approximates for maturity and life experience " must be quantified in order to know ‘how much is enough?’ and thus avoid discriminating. How do we quantify maturity? How do we qualify it? Experience, as previously noted, can be measured in years, but quantity reveals little or nothing about quality. So, what about maturity? How is age “reasonably” used to measure it? It’s a grossly inconsistent and therefore unreasonable measure, at best. One cannot assume that age alone is a wholly valid indication of experience or maturity.</p>
<p>
I think it is very important, in that if any of the professors had wanted her as their graduate student, it is unlikely that anyone else would have raised a serious objection. I think that she was passed over for more desirable candidates, and when they polled the faculty to ask why “maturity” came up repeatedly.</p>
<p>
This is not much of a smoking gun, both because of the reason polarscribe noted and because the only witnesses to the alleged statement on age are the speaker, the aggrieved, and her mother, who can hardly be considered an objective observer. It all boils down to he said/she said.</p>
<p>In a similar case decided earlier this year, where OCR ruled in favor of the younger-than-usual student, the smoking gun was also a potential “he said/she said” situation, there were no velcro parents present, just the student and the prof, and the professor who illegally cited age did not later deny it. Yes, the admissions director at UIUC could lie and claim he never said those things – again, assuming the attribution is accurate.</p>
<p>Indeed. Lacking sufficient experience is not age discrimination. What constitutes sufficient experience should then be defined in concrete terms. Likewise with “sufficient maturity” – how do we objectively and concretely define it? Age is a poor proxy.</p>
<p>Couple of notes from someone in an applied psych PhD program (School, notg Clinical):</p>
<p>-Most Clinical (and Counseling and School) Psych grad students do NOT come straight out of undergrad. Most take a year–or more commonly-two off to do research. Some do (I did, some of my friends did), but it’s not universal (and I would doubt it’s even modal, but I don’t have data for that)</p>
<p>-Anyone shooting for a clinical psych PhD who applied to one program is probably going to be requested, even if they are an amazing applicant. Heck, many, many people who are very strong applicants and apply to 10 programs are rejected by all. This is a field with a mean acceptance rate of 10%, so programs are roughly as selective as HYPS are flor undergrads. In 2009, the UIUC clinical program admitted 12/159 applicants.</p>
<p>-DOES she have experience? Presentations, peer-reviewed publications? EVERYONE needs these, ESPECIALLY at research heavy institutions like UIUC.</p>
<p>-If she was under 18 when they started clinical work, that could cause a lot of legal issues.</p>
<p>Admissions to applied psych PhD programs requires a LOT more than being smart! Now, she could have an amazing CV, years of RA experience, and peer-reviewed publications. But if so, why not mention it in the article?</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>And yet this is completely impossible. Every candidate brings their own set of life experiences that cannot be judged or weighed in anything remotely approaching the “concrete terms” you demand.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>The answer is, of course, we can’t.</p>
<p>Graduate admissions are highly subjective and variable across institutions for a huge variety of reasons: specialization, faculty interests, particular programming, etc. A graduate degree program is much closer to an apprenticeship than it is to anything in baccalaureate education.</p>
<p>A very sensible response, psych_. Still, the fact remains that age itself was invoked, and that’s illegal. Much of the above discussion grapples with the difference between age and experience, or the difference between age and maturity. Age, however, is neither of those things. That is where the university erred. No comment is made here about her relative qualifications, or lack thereof. Simply on the basis of invoking age did the university discriminate and thereby provide grounds for an OCR complaint.</p>
<p>I suspect this girl wasn’t accepted into the program because she is immature. The waters get muddied because a lack of maturity is probably tied to her age. They can’t reject her because of her age but they can for being immature.</p>
<p>It is much nicer for a professor to tell her she was rejected because she is too young than to tell her she was rejected because she is too immature. He or she was putting a good spin on a rejection. If she wants to take this to court then she can hear why she was really rejected without the sugar coating.</p>
<p>As other posters have pointed out the professors who have rejected her have been the ones who have been teaching her for the last four years. They know her and it makes it harder to support the claim that they rejected her because of her age and without any consideration to who she is as an individual.</p>
<p>One professor left the door open to her applying again in a couple of years. Now that she has published this article with allegations of age discrimination I suspect that door is closed.</p>
<p>cross-posted with DoyleOwl and polarscribe. Those are good posts and thanks for the information and analysis about age discrimination DoyleOwl.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Again, that’s not necessarily true. Age can legally be invoked as a criteria if the institution can argue that it serves as a reasonable proxy for another critical component of someone’s ability to perform in the particular program.</p>
<p>Is that true in this case? I’m not a lawyer so I can’t say for sure, but could it be reasonably argued? My guess would be yes.</p>