The Prestige Paradox: How Status Structures Access to Graduate Education

• In Event: AERA Roundtable Session Friday 1:45 pm - Gold 2
  In Roundtable Session: Shaping Graduate Success: Relationships, Writing, & Institutional Culture

Abstract

This study extends existing scholarship on graduate admissions by interrogating how institutional prestige and relational trust networks shape selection in high-consensus STEM fields. Utilizing social network analysis of over 5,400 applications to six elite STEM doctoral programs, the research illustrates how institutional exchange patterns reflect not merely reputational sorting but relational trust-informed infrastructures. Findings reveal how trust networks and cognitive biases reinforce and maintain stratification in highly competitive STEM Ph.D. programs.

Author

• Steve Desir, University of Southern California