Graduate Admissions Practices: A Targeted Review of the Literature

Abstract

This review of the literature covers 5 major areas within the graduate admissions process: (a) the decentralized nature of graduate admissions; (b) the types of materials that are collected as part of the application process, including standardized test scores; (c) the variety of admissions models that are used to make admissions decisions; (d) training and tools used by graduate admissions committees to support the graduate admissions process; and (e) admitting diverse applicants. The literature review concludes with a discussion of the findings and the areas for future research.

Cognitive Work Analysis and Visualization Design for the Graduate Admission Decision Making Process

“…Findings from the current research were similar to the themes identified through interviews and literature review conducted by the Educational Testing Service (Payne, 2017;Michel, Belur, Naemi, & Kell, 2019): the graduate admission process is decentralized -decisions are made by departmentlevel committees rather than the campus-wide admissions office. There were general goals and processes shared by the departments, but the specific goals and strategies varied based on the department's own condition.…”

Review of Racially Equitable Admissions Practices in STEM Doctoral Programs

“…Another structural change that could have a large impact is to use cohort-based admissions instead of sponsor-based admissions; that is, programs which use a model where faculty choose individual students to sponsor could switch to a model where the graduate students are admitted as a cohort and gain faculty sponsorship through exposure to professors in classroom settings, department open houses at the start of the school year, or a rotation program. When the admissions officers can review the cohort as a group instead of considering each applicant individually during admissions, it is more apparent to the admissions team whether certain demographics are overrepresented in the cohort [55], and makes creating a more diverse cohort more attractive [56,57]. Given that universities and individuals on the admissions committees claim to value diversity in the student body [54] but only underrepresented admissions officers behave in accordance with those values [48,49], since cohort-based admissions encourage all admissions officers to consider the diversity of the forming student body earlier in the admissions process [55], changing to cohort-based admissions could bring the behavior of admissions committees more in line with their stated values.…”

“…When the admissions officers can review the cohort as a group instead of considering each applicant individually during admissions, it is more apparent to the admissions team whether certain demographics are overrepresented in the cohort [55], and makes creating a more diverse cohort more attractive [56,57]. Given that universities and individuals on the admissions committees claim to value diversity in the student body [54] but only underrepresented admissions officers behave in accordance with those values [48,49], since cohort-based admissions encourage all admissions officers to consider the diversity of the forming student body earlier in the admissions process [55], changing to cohort-based admissions could bring the behavior of admissions committees more in line with their stated values.…”

Education increases decision-rule use: An investigation of education and incentives to improve decision making.

“…However, decision makers such as hiring managers, assessment psychologists, and admission officers rarely use evidence-based decision-making procedures (Highhouse, 2008;Michel et al, 2019;Ryan & Sackett, 1987;Silzer & Jeanneret, 2011;Slaughter & Kausel, 2014). Hence, an important, yet largely unanswered question is how decision making can be improved in practice (Kuncel, 2018;Milkman et al, 2009;Neumann et al, 2020).…”