[vector_spaces]

I'm sorry that you were denied access, gatekeeping is real, especially in STEM fields.

I just want to offer that not everyone doing a PhD is doing so for reasons of money or prestige, and not all of them are coming from money or prestige. And the gatekeeping doesn't end once you get in, either. If anything it intensifies the further along you get, and by orders of magnitude the more your circumstances don't parse to something like {age = <30, marital_status = single, kids = false, parental_income = upper_class | middle_class, parental_support = true, needs_to_work_to_survive = false, parent_has_bachelors = true}

[leaveitalone]

I'm not sure it was gate keeping, I think there just weren't enough spots and my grades weren't as good as my competitors. Just wish the ones who didn't want to do it didn't bother so that more spots for us lesser graded people could have got in.

[lumiukko]

But even the grades are highly contextual. I am unfamiliar with how much they vary across the US, but usually grades depend a lot on the university itself and the professors teaching or grading the courses. The prestige of the university may be taken into account as well. Perhaps it wasn't possible to go to a "better" university, due to financial or simply personal reasons.

Diversity is a really important aspect in building PhD cohorts and research teams - only choosing the best candidates based on grades introduces a bad bias that may even exacerbate the situation.