NEW YORK (RPT) – Universities have been forced to cancel on-campus interviews with prospective graduate students, leading admission committees to adopt new criteria for deciding which students should be accepted to prominent graduate programs. High-profile institutions have begun adopting the ABC rule, which involves admitting students into graduate programs alphabetically. “This was much better than the other alternative strategies we were considering,” one admissions officer told RPT, “we thought about admitting students based on their ability to explain to us how Zoom works or giving them graduate fellowships in proportion to the number of pestering emails that they sent to faculty members. We thought that this ABC rule would be much fairer.”
The Dean of Graduate Studies at a major university that pioneered this new policy explained the logic to an RPT correspondent. “Given our commitment to diversity and inclusion, we had to find a system for admitting students that wouldn’t be biased against anyone. This seemed like the best option.” She continued, “We thought about admitting students based on their parents’ commitment to donating large sums of money, like we do for undergraduates, but then someone pointed out that we would then only have rich graduate students. This would be problematic because it might make faculty members realize how underpaid they are.” An admissions officer at this same university added, “It was actually really hard for us to make this decision because of technical problems on the video call we had to discuss making our new policy. Somebody started saying the ABCs to see if the connection was alright and then somehow that became our new admissions policy. I think this was all just a big miscommunication.”
Some graduate school applicants have expressed concerns. One applicant, Zachary Zimmerman, told RPT, “I think this whole thing is bullshit! I’m going to the Social Security office as soon as it reopens to change my name to Aaron Aaronoff.” However, other students have praised the new policy, including prospective student Andy Anderson. Andreson told RPT that the ABC rule has given him new hope for his graduate career. “I just barely passed my undergrad in Event Planning at the University of Phoenix. Now I’m going to MIT, motherfuckers!”
