Admissions Officers as Street-Level Bureaucrats: Exercising Discretion to Enact Competing Conceptions of Equity

Selective higher education institutions around the world are increasingly adopting holistic admissions practices—making it crucial to understand how admissions personnel make decisions, with what consequences for access and equity. Based on 51 interviews with admissions officers and faculty at Korea’s most selective universities, we examine competing definitions of who is worthy of admission and how these in turn influence evaluations. We demonstrate that admissions decisions are profoundly shaped not only by formal policy but also by values and interests stemming from evaluator’s own personal and professional backgrounds, as well as power dynamics among evaluators. Our findings suggest that microprocesses of discretion among admissions officers and faculty undermine government policy efforts to increase equity in admissions outcomes.