Historically, admissions committees for biomedical Ph.D. programs have heavily weighed GRE scores when considering applications for admission. The predictive validity of GRE scores on graduate student success is unclear, and there have been no recent investigations specifically on the relationship between general GRE scores and graduate student success in biomedical research. Data from Vanderbilt University Medical School’s biomedical umbrella program were used to test to what extent GRE scores can predict outcomes in graduate school training when controlling for other admissions information. Overall, the GRE did not prove useful in predicating who will graduate with a Ph.D., pass the qualifying exam, have a shorter time to defense, deliver more conference presentations, publish more first author papers, or obtain an individual grant or fellowship. GRE scores were found to be moderate predictors of first semester grades, and weak to moderate predictors of graduate GPA and some elements of a faculty evaluation. These findings suggest admissions committees of biomedical doctoral programs should consider minimizing their reliance on GRE scores to predict the important measures of progress in the program and student productivity.

We were led to this title word analysis graphically, by noting lecture outliers-some videos were watched multiple times by individual students, while others were watched by very few students. Preliminary analyses indicated that these outliers were potentially explained by the lecture titles-some indicated that they contained information on assignments and exercises, others were labeled optional. This led us to the conclusion that students were sensitive to word choice in lecture titles. We created the list of words to check by scraping all lecture titles from our data set and parsing these strings on spaces. We counted how many instances of each word we had and considered all words that appeared more than 20 times across all lectures. We eliminated words that were not meaningful (i.e.

The provision of grant aid is important to students’ postsecondary opportunities and success. It is well established that grant aid increases the probability of enrollment in postsecondary education. A slate of studies in recent years has extended this research to examine whether grant aid also has an impact on persistence and degree attainment. This article presents a systematic review and meta-analysis of the best available evidence of the effect of grant aid on postsecondary persistence and degree attainment. The systematic review identifies and describes the landscape of the literature on grant aid programs and their effects on postsecondary success. A meta-analysis of 43 studies yielding 75 effect sizes estimates that grant aid increases the probability of student persistence and degree completion between 2 and 3 percentage points. When considering the dollar amount of aid, we estimate an additional $1,000 of grant aid improves persistence and attainment by 1.5 to 2 percentage points. Suggestions for future research and implications for policy are discussed.

Time management skills are an essential component of college student success, especially in online classes. Through a randomized control trial of students in a for-credit online course at a public 4-year university, we test the efficacy of a scheduling intervention aimed at improving students' time management. Results indicate the intervention had positive effects on initial achievement scores; students who were given the opportunity to schedule their lecture watching in advance scored about a third of a standard deviation better on the first quiz than students who were not given that opportunity. These effects are concentrated in students with the lowest self-reported time management skills. However, these effects diminish over time such that we see a marginally significant negative effect of treatment on the last week's quiz grade and no difference in overall course scores. We examine the effect of the intervention on plausible mechanisms to explain the observed achievement effects. We find no evidence that the intervention affected cramming, procrastination, or the time at which students did work.

Millions of high school students take Advanced Placement (AP) courses, which can provide college credit. Using nationally representative data, I identify a diverse set of higher education outcomes that are related to receipt of AP college credit. Institution fixed effects regression reduces bias associated with varying AP credit policies and student sorting across higher education. Results indicate college credits earned in high school are related to reduced time to degree, double majoring, and taking more advanced coursework. Bounding exercises suggest the time to degree and double major outcomes are not likely driven by bias from unobserved student characteristics. Policies used to support earning college credits while in high school appear to enhance undergraduate education and may accelerate time to degree. ABSTRACT AUTHORS VERSION AbstractMillions of high school students take Advanced Placement (AP) courses, which can provide college credit. Using nationally representative data, I identify a diverse set of higher education outcomes that are related to receipt of AP college credit. Institution fixed effects regression reduces bias associated with varying AP credit policies and student sorting across higher education. Results indicate college credits earned in high school are related to reduced time to degree, double majoring, and taking more advanced coursework. Bounding exercises suggest the time to degree and double major outcomes are not likely driven by bias from unobserved student characteristics. Policies used to support earning college credits while in high school appear to enhance undergraduate education and may accelerate time to degree.