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Written by Dr. Casey Fiesler on 2024-09-17 at 23:18

hey professor friends!

In your departments, do current graduate students ever help with graduate admissions? Does this raise concerns about applicant privacy?

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Written by Nick Doty on 2024-09-17 at 23:31

@cfiesler our doctoral program at Berkeley always had one PhD student on the admissions committee; I served once and found it an interesting experience. I'm not sure why it would introduce any particular privacy issues for applicants -- are students less trustworthy than faculty or staff?

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Written by Dr. Casey Fiesler on 2024-09-18 at 04:37

@npdoty My thought was that as an applicant I would expect faculty to be seeing my application materials--but not my (potential) future fellow students. It just occurred to me that it might be strange to know that your labmate knows your GRE scores.

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Written by Nick Doty on 2024-09-18 at 12:24

@cfiesler yeah, I'm not sure what mental model applying students have of the process, but it might be beneficial to explain that up front: this is who reads your application, how they decide, rules for confidentiality, etc.

It could be uncomfortable that students, faculty, staff have read your letters etc but it might also be comforting that a student (and recent applicant) is in the room to remind others what it's like to go through the process.

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Written by Rob Ricci on 2024-09-17 at 23:39

@cfiesler In our department, no. The closest it comes is that I might ask students their opinion of a school in their home country that I'm not familiar with. But we certainly don't share applications with them.

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Written by Nathan Taylor on 2024-09-17 at 23:44

@ricci @cfiesler wow, interesting, over here you can self-nominate to be on the admissions committee (nobody ever gets turned down) and you either get assigned from the pool of incoming Msc or PhD students, and get unfettered access to students' statements, letters, transcripts, ...

...kind of assumed that this was the default around other departments!

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Written by Nathan Taylor on 2024-09-17 at 23:48

@ricci @cfiesler (this is the same department that thought https://www.insidehighered.com/admissions/article/2020/12/14/u-texas-will-stop-using-controversial-algorithm-evaluate-phd was a good idea, of course, so, ...)

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Written by Rob Ricci on 2024-09-18 at 00:15

@nathan what in the actual fuck

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Written by Dan Ports on 2024-09-17 at 23:43

@cfiesler when I was at UW (and AFAIK still), grad students and postdocs did some of the first-round application review

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Written by chris martens @ popl on 2024-09-18 at 01:18

@dan @cfiesler NU does it for first round as well. CMU had full committee involvement (which i know from having served on it when i was a student)

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Written by John Carlos Baez on 2024-09-18 at 00:09

@cfiesler - "no" to the first question, in the math department at U. C. Riverside.

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Written by Kerry Nice on 2024-09-18 at 01:13

@cfiesler None on the admissions committee for University of Melbourne ABP faculty.

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Written by Megan Lynch (she/her) on 2024-09-18 at 01:16

@cfiesler Grad student here. Did see a request from our graduate group for grads to volunteer to assist with admissions. They didn't discuss ethics in this call, but may have later.

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Written by Jonathan Balkind on 2024-09-18 at 03:44

@cfiesler at UCSB CS for the last few years we have paid a couple of student employees each year and they are trained beforehand on FERPA etc.

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Written by paulette d. koronkevich on 2024-09-18 at 04:29

@cfiesler yes and I'm sure there are privacy concerns, otoh students are grateful for any amount of work that will get them more money

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Written by Mathias Payer on 2024-09-18 at 05:29

@cfiesler the EPFL CS program has a few PhD students working on the admission committee, more precisely at the pre filtering stage. All applicants are also checked by faculty but senior graduate students complement the picture.

Same as reviewing first papers (eg for journals), this is a great learning experience for the students.

I'm not aware of any additional privacy concerns.

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Written by Jeremy Gibbons on 2024-09-18 at 20:13

@cfiesler Not for us.

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Written by Redish Lab on 2024-12-28 at 00:11

@cfiesler Yes, in our program, grad students sit on all committees (including steering committee). (Usually one or two GS/committee.) Grad students are full voting members on these committees. These have been absolutely crucial because potential recruits will often say things to other grad students that they won't say to professors. We also get feedback from meetings (one-on-one, dinners, etc during the recruiting visit) for committee consideration from everyone in the program (who wants to provide it).

We have never had any problems with privacy. Grad students are adults and should be able to respect privacy as well as anyone else.

TBH, historically, professors are more likely to break confidentiality than grad students. 🙃

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