<p>And if you put yourself out there into the public domain, you’d better be ready for plenty of criticism. This thread is gentle compared to most commentary.</p>
<p>“The earlier I get into college, then the earlier I can start my career,” Kelsey says. “People tell me to take time off. I don’t want that.”</p>
<p>You know, I feel like a lot of young people who graduate from college at about 21 or 22 say this. “I want to get started on my career before I get too old!” I said it too, which is one reason I went straight to a PhD program at 22. While I don’t regret it and I’m doing very well here, if I were to do it over I WOULD have gone backpacking through Europe or teaching abroad or even just working a job, saving some money, and earning some more maturity and a sense of purpose. I am a totally different person at 25 than I was at 22; also, sometimes those experiences are just fun. You can’t live the college experience when you are working for a PhD or trying to get a post-doc and tenure.</p>
<p>It’s even more ridiculous for her to say this at 17. Even if she returns to get her PhD at 20, she’s still going to be the youngest person in her program and will be a 26-year-old clinical psychology graduate. She has her entire life ahead of her. When you’re in your late teens and early twenties you feel older than you are and you just want to race through everything. It’s only when you get into mid-twenties that you realize how much life you actually have to live, and how everything’s not a race.</p>
<p>Also, re: her father and faculty relations - her father is a professor of bioinformatics in the Department of Crop Sciences. He probably almost never interacts with the psychology professors, so I doubt this will be a problem for him.</p>
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<p>My thoughts exactly! I have really yet to read anything suggesting that this girl is actually competitive for the program to which she applied, and even very competitive applicants will face rejection–and usually a lot of it–in clinical psych,</p>
<p>juillet, well said. Girl needs to slow down.</p>
<p>Does anyone else found it odd that this girl went on record as saying that she doesn’t need friends – and yet wants to be a clinical psychologist? To be fair, she said that when she was fourteen. Still . . . .</p>
<p>One of the oddest things here is that her father is a professor so he knows how grad school admission works. He knows there are not concrete lists of reasons why we chose this student and reasons why we did not choose this student. He knows academic departments generally prefer students who did their undergraduate degrees somewhere else. And he knows that if your top priority is getting into a graduate program in your field, you need to apply to more than one grad school.</p>
<p>^^^ Or maybe he did advise her, but she thought he didn’t know what he was talking about. It wouldn’t be the first (or the last) time a child went against a parent’s advice.</p>
<p>Echoing what most people in this thread have said so far: extremely competitive program, only one side of the story (and a “he-said/she-said” scenario), and only academic experience. There’s a whole host of reasons she might have been denied admissions, and singling out age as the ONLY reason seems to be a little unlikely. I can definitely understand wanting to push through stuff and get to a career/be “done” as soon as possible, but waiting an extra year isn’t going to kill her; and if grad school is so important to her, apply to more schools.</p>
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<p>And yes this is a hallmark of being so young. I remember feeling similar when I was at the grad school junction. And like Julliet who wrote before, looking back, I really wish I could have done other things before grad school and career (for financial reasons I didn’t feel I had much choice at the time to travel however). Nevertheless, it’s only much later you look back and realize, “what was the rush for? where was i racing to get to?” </p>
<p>I LOVE my career, but gosh it’s a very very long life. I can’t see what the value was in having a few more years under my belt. And there are so many wonderful experiences to have in life, and some of those experiences are much easier to do when you are younger, or before you get entrenched into middle class life (the career track, the mortgage, the children, etc.).</p>
<p>As a side note, I have also been posting on the HuffPo article site, and a couple of the people on that site have decided that since I am both a UIUC grad student and consistently unsympathetic to the author’s plight that I must secretly be a representative of the department and/or university, possibly even the admissions director him/herself!</p>
<p>Incidentally, I have been assuming that by “admissions director”, she meant whichever professor was chairing the admissions committee, but I am not sure how that department handles grad admissions.</p>
<p>I find this situation deplorable. This student demonstrated her capabilities over a period of years. Her application should have been judged solely on merit (as should all applications). Rejecting her based upon her age is the type of thing most of us have been fighting about for years.</p>
<p>On the subject of age discrimination, the reality is that the protection almost always comes into play for someone older (not younger). This is the same situation for most laws and regulations of this type. They were designed to protect specific groups from historic and systemic discrimination.</p>
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It probably was! She was applying to the same school from which she received her undergrad, so the people reviewing her application were the exact same people to whom she had been “demonstrating her capabilities” for those years. If they did not want to take her for grad school, it was not because they were unfamiliar with her ability!</p>
<p>Whether or not any actual age discrimination occurred here is unknown - all the evidence we have for it is in her article, and it is depressingly slim. She had a chance (however difficult) to gain some real evidence when meeting with the “admissions director”, but she squandered it and now all we have is a he said/she said debacle.</p>
<p>We do not have any evidence that she was a competitive applicant regardless of age, but again it does not look especially likely. Her GPA and GRE are the only things she has noted as qualifying her, and as most on here know from experience, those are not enough - where was her research, her field experience, her specific preparation and match for specific UIUC professors? If she was NOT a top applicant, how then can you even say that her age even came into play?</p>
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I am not sure how much “historic and systemic discrimination” there has been among young applicants to grad programs. It appears to me that most that have wanted to have done so, and I am not aware of any other instances of this occurring at UIUC, nor of this arising anywhere else of late. Admittedly, there are only a few that would be directly affected, but still I am having trouble find a historic and systemic pattern here.</p>
<p>@cosmicfish</p>
<p>My comment about our laws regarding “historic and systemic” discrimination were general. I was not making any direct claim concerning grad school admissions. For example, older employees HAD tended to be terminated at disproportionate rates since they were more costly (given compensation increases over time) than younger employees with similar skill sets. That was a pattern of historic and systemic discrimination that led to specific legislation on age discrimination. The intent was to protect older, not younger, employees.</p>
<p>You may well be correct regarding qualifications. We do not have much information on the candidate and we have nothing on other candidates. We do not know if there was a set number of openings or a more flexible target. There is not adequate evidence on this point. However, unless the OP is not telling the truth, this young candidate was told to her face that she was too young. Imagine for a moment that it was a candidate that had been told that he or she was too old. A lawsuit would be imminent.</p>
<p>I don’t believe for a minute she was told to her face that the reason she was denied admission was her age.</p>
<p>As has been explained over and over, the admissions process to a graduate clinical psych program is very very competitive, and most programs now have maybe a handful of openings for their classes and the competition is fierce. Most schools have a strong preference for applicants with research and practical work experience in the field. She likely was beat out by stronger candidates. Even back when I applied, when dinosaurs roamed the earth, I applied to probably 20 or so programs and got into 3. It is fiercely competitive, and to get itno any APA approved program is extremely difficult . Anyone who applies to just one program is incredibly unrealistic and/or unfamiliar with this process. Just because her dad is faculty in another department does not guarantee her a spot in the entering class. Her article sounds like sour grapes and entitlement to me.</p>
<p>^ Exactly what she said! </p>
<p>Cosmicfish, I saw those comments about you on the HP site…made me laugh. The general sense of her supporters (which in number is a tiny proportion compared to all others on this site and that one), seem to now believe those who post in opposition are in cahoots with the department. As if there can be no other reason!</p>
<p>The whole ‘controversy’ sounds really immature to me.</p>
<p>^^^ I agree. When you get interviewed for a position, regardless of which college or program, they will consider a number of factors besides your GPA. How someone can consider that ‘deplorable’ baffles me. If that was the sole basis for acceptance, then there really wouldn’t be a need for an interview and clearly one’s success in the real world doesn’t revolve solely around your GPA.</p>
<p>Roger_Dooley began this thread with a simple question: “Should the age of the applicant be a factor in grad school admissions?” For this, I believe there is a simple answer - NO.</p>
<p>From that point onward, there are a host of issues that have been introduced. None of us have the facts. None of us were personally involved in the various conversations. Virtually any issue that has been raised can be questioned. For example, there appears to be universal condemnation concerning at least one parent participating in a discussion with the college. There may be hundreds of reasons why this never should have happened. I would side with the majority based on the little evidence we actually have. However, the student is a minor. She can’t legally sign a contract. Might there be an acceptable reason to bring a parent? Maybe.</p>
<p>The answer to the OP’s question is simple. No, age discrimination is illegal (even though the relevant legislation was originally intended to protect those who are older). Everything else involves us trying to make a judgment on a specific situation we know very little about. This forum may or may not prove helpful to someone but it is unlikely to materially impact the school’s decision. Like some other posters, I wish the student the best no matter what path she takes.</p>
<p>Why do you/others keep bringing up the fact that she cannot sign a contract? This is completely irrelevant. There is no contract to be signed in a meeting with faculty, <em>especially</em> when the student was denied admission to a program! And all those years in undergrad? Did she take mommy or daddy to any meeting she attended? Unlikely. If she took mommy or daddy to this meeting, perhaps it was as a show of force or to have witnesses. Quite possible. Or maybe the faculty suggested she have mommy or daddy there for support? I doubt it, but who knows.</p>
<p>“…having witnesses” in this situation may prove to be very interesting.</p>
<p>Sure would. Really do not believe thes stuff written in that huffpo article would have been said in a meeting with a colleague/prent present. Strongly suspect what was written is at best paraphrased and at least taken out of context.</p>