Admission to a doctoral program is both an individual and a faculty activity. Individuals must make decisions to apply and faculty must make decisions about acceptance. Decision making of these different stakeholders is addressed by only limited research within the professional literature. The focus of this study is to provide information addressing this void for guiding the decision making of graduate faculty. More specifically, this study examines the utility of reference information for the selection of doctoral candidates from several perspectives. Most importantly, this study focuses on "real" as opposed to simulated selection practices by examining historical data used to make actual admission decisions.