JeffE's answer here indicates that holders of a master’s degree are held to higher standards when it comes to graduate admissions. The stated requirements for some graduate programs (example from UC Berkeley) also outright exclude applicants with doctoral degrees. These seem to be saying that holding a higher degree prior to application is a disadvantage (a fatal one in the case of a PhD). This also applies to private universities: Stanford apparently has the same restriction (at least in computer science); same goes for MIT.
I don't understand why:
If there are two applicants, Alice and Bob, who have achieved largely similar things, it seems logical that both should have a roughly equal chance of being admitted. However, based on JeffE's answer, if Alice has a Masters degree while Bob does not, it's Bob that gets admitted instead of Alice. JeffE's answer even indicates that if Alice has achieved slightly more than Bob, it's still Bob that gets admitted.
If graduate admissions is looking for students that are capable of succeeding in its program, then Alice should be more likely to succeed than Bob since she's already had some experience of graduate study. This should be even more the case if Alice already has a PhD – if she can do it once, she should be able to do it again.
JeffE's answer indicates that since Alice has had more opportunities than Bob, she should also be held to higher standard. However it should also be true that Alice has already achieved what Bob has yet to and in fact might not be able to achieve. Further, JeffE's answer seems to be saying that Alice should do the academic equivalent of financial engineering and pass her graduate-level courses & thesis without getting a master’s degree even if she qualifies for it, which sounds silly.
As for applicants with PhD degrees, my first guess would be that this is because multiple PhDs is not a good idea, and the university is acting in the applicant's best interests. However if this is the case, then this is effectively telling the applicant "I know what you want better than you do", which also sounds silly. UC Berkeley's requirements also seem to be saying that if someone with a CV worthy of a tenured position were to apply for a PhD student position, the university will say "no" even though it's clearly better in their best interests (in terms of research output) to say "yes".
Presumably I'm misunderstanding something because if this behavior were irrational, it would already have been changed. What am I missing?
EDIT: I wonder if things are different in programs where the student is involved in research directly without spending time on coursework?
Answer
What we are looking for, or at least I'm looking for, when talking about graduate admissions is your potential as a researcher.
I'll touch on the PhD portion, which I think is actually more obvious, and then move onto the Masters.
PhD: As Nate Eldredge notes, one of the concepts behind a PhD is that you should have learned how to engage with a field, interact with the literature, learned new methods, etc. And you should have learned how to do it beyond what's taught in classes. Applying for a new degree program, unless it is in a vastly different field, suggests that you have tried to move into a different area and have failed enough that you think you need to go back for coursework and supervised learning. That's not a good sign.
Masters Degrees: The thing about a Masters is that, in some ways, you've already taken a "swing at the bat" - which means that you've had the chance to show your potential - so you need to have done so.
If there are two applicants, Alice and Bob, who have achieved largely similar things, it seems logical that both should have a roughly equal chance of being admitted. However, based on JeffE's answer, if Alice has a Masters degree while Bob does not, it's Bob that gets admitted instead of Alice. JeffE's answer even indicates that if Alice has achieved slightly more than Bob, it's still Bob that gets admitted.
In this case, they actually haven't achieved similar things. If Bob has gotten the same output despite not having Masters level coursework, access to faculty at the graduate level, etc. then they haven't achieved the same thing.
If graduate admissions is looking for students that are capable of succeeding in its program, then Alice should be more likely to succeed than Bob since she's already had some experience of graduate study. This should be even more the case if Alice already has a PhD - if she can do it once, she should be able to do it again.
"Getting through my degree program" is not actually what I'm looking for. For some reason, if Alice is reapplying to a PhD program, she has gotten through with all the tools she needs...and then wants to go back for more tools. That's not a good leading indicator of her potential as an independent researcher in the future.
However if this is the case, then this is effectively telling the applicant "I know what you want better than you do", which also sounds silly.
They probably do. If nothing else, UC Berkeley is working with a much larger experiential data set.
UC Berkeley's requirements also seem to be saying that if someone with a CV worthy of a tenured position were to apply for a PhD student position, the university will say "no" even though it's clearly better in their best interests (in terms of research output) to say "yes".
An extremely unlikely edge case that might prompt an exemption to their policy, but policy is not written for once-a-generation savants.
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