Review of Racially Equitable Admissions Practices in STEM Doctoral Programs

Abstract

This study reviews literature on racially equitable admissions practices relevant to graduate programs in STEM. Graduate Record Exam (GRE) scores correlate more strongly with race, gender, and socioeconomic status than performance metrics for research during or after graduate school. Structural changes to admissions processes that can improve equity of admissions decisions and reduce correlations between admissions decisions and demographic data include using holisticreview or composite scores that quantize more components of an application, removing hard limits on course requirements, admitting students as a cohort instead of to individual faculty sponsors, and diversifying admissions committees. Some alternative scoring methods attempt to measure personality traits, but performing these measurements during admissions may present difficulties. Bridge programs—whether they are implemented as collaborations with a minority-serving institution,a personalized educational program for each student admitted to a program, or a stand-alone program before the doctoral degree program—may be able to improve both recruitment and retention of students with underrepresented racial and ethnic identities in their field of study. Finally, financial barriers to applications can disproportionately affect underrepresented applicants due to systemic racism. We end with recommendations for graduate programs to improve equity in admissions processes.

Rubric-based holistic review: a promising route to equitable graduate admissions in physics

“…For a more in depth review about equitable admissions practices in STEM doctoral programs, we refer the reader to Roberts et al [71] III. METHODS…”

“…Second, following the call of others [71,91,92], we recommend that members of the admissions committee should be of diverse backgrounds and representative of the applicant pool. To accomplish that, departments might also consider adding non-tenure stream faculty, post-docs, and current graduate students to their admissions committees, providing appropriate recognition and compensation as necessary.…”

A Multi-Phasic Approach to Increase Diversity Among Doctoral Candidates in Biomedical Engineering

“…One such real barrier we sought to alleviate is the financial barrier of applying to graduate school, as it can be a costly endeavor; to apply to one graduate school, an applicant conceivably needs to pay an application fee, pay to sit for the GRE, and in some cases, pay for expensive GRE preparatory courses. We sought to remove these financial barriers by (1) offering low-paperwork fee waivers to applicants and (2) eliminating the use of the GRE in graduate admissions, two actionable solutions supported in the literature [8]. At the beginning of each recruitment cycle, our department commits a number of application fee waivers for those who ask for them.…”