Tending the Gate: Admitting Students

Abstract

This chapter explores how the admission process serves as a biased competence test of higher education. When designed around incomplete or inaccurate understandings of the human brain, it serves as a barrier to access to higher education either accidentally or purposefully discriminatory. A review of the implications of standard application and admissions processes highlights how admission processes shape not only an individual campus’s environment but access to higher education nationally.

Isabel has been sifting through a stack of papers, forms, and tri-fold pamphlets trying to sort out where to begin. She knows some of her grades were mediocre, but she knows she is smart enough, and college is the only way to change her future. The community college is close to her foster family’s home, it has no dorms, and she can’t stay with them past her 19th birthday unless she has been admitted to the college. Her 19th birthday falls before the date when acceptance letters are issued. Because of policies and bureaucratic red tape within the dependency system, she has few options and there is a high likelihood that she will become homeless.

Another issue plaguing Isabel with the admissions process is that she had a problem with financial aid documents. She had to provide proof that she was a ward of the court and in foster care during the last year. The school’s financial aid administrator was not sure which box to check on Isabel’s form. It has been almost two weeks and she still has not heard back from financial aid. So, even if she can be granted a waiver before her birthday, she doesn’t know how she will pay for college. Isabel sits among the scattered, colorful brochures in her shared room at her foster home and cries.—Jubilee Belle Lawhead