Admissions Prototype

What it is:

Admissions Prototype is a game with two sets of players; the applicants and the admissions committee. The players apply to a fictional graduate school using a portfolio consisting of only three items. (Examples include: A thing I made, A life experience, A time I failed) They have five minutes to create their portfolio and can select from existing ideas or make their own. Meanwhile, “the admissions committee” must select a set of criteria by which they will evaluate the applicants. After 5 minutes the applicants have 3 minutes to share their stories with the admissions committee. The admissions committee makes a decision and then a facilitator leads a global debrief of the experience.

Why we did it:

We were exploring alternative ways to evaluate graduate school applicants. By playing this game with faculty members and administrators, we were able to get an insight into the potentials and pitfalls of such an approach.

What we learned:

We played this game at the Germination Workshop (August 2019) at Boise State. The game, and the discussion afterward revealed concerns about how to evaluate potential students when the proposed attributes fell outside of the faculty’s expertise. The role of metrics, rigor, and equitable evaluation emerged as key themes. An additional point of insight was the ways in which the experience was described as “stressful” by many participants. By creating an embodied experience of the application, there may be ways to create more empathy for grad school applicants.