In case you were wondering exactly what grad schools do to make their admissions more ‘diverse’, here’s Scott Jaschik from Inside Higher Ed with coverage of a study that asks how graduate admissions look at diversity:

Scholar explores how graduate admissions committees view measures of merit and diversity

Litigation and political battles about affirmative action tend to focus on undergraduate or professional school admissions, which are supervised by admissions professionals. In Ph.D. admissions, faculty members are the key players. And although they too must weigh the relative value of various measures of merit, and how much diversity should be considered a form of merit, a separate qualification or not considered at all. A new study aims to lift the veil on this type of admissions — at least at a group of top programs.

Among the key findings: Initial reviews of candidates tend to be dominated by traditional definitions of merit (grades and test scores), with little if any attention given to issues of diversity. When diversity comes into play later in the process, professors on admissions committees seem to have a range of motives — some reflecting more than others a commitment to diversifying their fields. For instance, qualifying for more institutional funds for graduate fellowships seems a strong motivator for departments to give additional consideration to minority candidates.

The study, by Julie R. Posselt, assistant professor of education at the University of Michigan, has just been published in American Journal of Education (University of Chicago Press), and an abstract is available here. For her study, Posselt observed admissions committee meetings and interviewed participants at 10 highly selective graduate programs, all highly ranked in their disciplines. The programs are at three research universities and across a wide range of disciplines. Posselt writes that her agreement with institutional review boards required that she grant the professors and their institutions complete anonymity. (She does note the disciplines of various professors.)