I've long been troubled by the Case of the Writer and the Schoolteacher.
A high school math teacher applied to the Ohio State mathematics graduate program with the goal of teaching in a college or community college after obtaining a PhD. She had already started working towards her goal by getting a Master's degree. Her application made perfect sense to me, so I was surprised to read the evaluations of her file by some of my (male) colleagues:
and hear the emotion in their voices when they spoke against her application at the graduate admissions committee meeting. You might think that a mathematics professor could have correctly calculated that she was only thirty-something, but even for mathematicians, one's cognitive skills decline when angry.
Several months later, near the end of the admissions season, an application arrived from a man who had made his career as a writer. It wasn't clear to me why he wanted to earn a mathematics PhD. Though he was older than the math teacher (whose age seemed to be a concern to my colleagues), and he hadn't gotten a Master's degree, my colleagues' evaluations were glowing. They said he was a mature, well-motivated adult, and that it would be a pleasure to have him in our classes.
It's curious how I and the rest of the committee could have read the same files so differently.