GRE as an Application Requirement
As we discussed at the Grad Council meeting on April 22, 2021, there are two issues to be considered: waiving the GRE requirement for this upcoming admissions cycle, and excluding the requirement permanently. The information below is offered to help inform your program’s decision-making on this issue. Please be in touch with the Admissions staff at any point in your discussions if you wish to change program policy.
Due to the challenges of the pandemic many schools did not require the GRE exam for the 2021 admissions cycle. Although there have been some test centers reopening, students are still experiencing difficulty both preparing for and taking the exam. I believe it would be in our best interest in attracting prospective students to continuing being flexible with this requirement for the 2022 admissions cycle. The GSAS admissions office has already been receiving inquiries as to whether applicants will need to take the GRE to apply for 2022 admission. ETS did release an at-home option but there are several technology and environment requirements in order to be eligible to take the at-home tests which have disadvantaged students. There have been several articles laying out some of these concerns, and two articles that I found helpful were:
- Graduate programs drop GRE after online version raises concerns about fairness (Science Magazine)
- Senators Scrutinize Virtual Proctoring Companies After Students Report Equity Concerns (Diverse Issues in Higher Education)
In particular, the articles focus on how the ETS at-home test disadvantages many of the students that we are actively trying to recruit to GSAS (including racially diverse students). In addition to equity and access concerns, many of our competitor programs no longer require the exam. The number of schools moving away from the exam is expected to increase this year and we are at risk of losing applicants next cycle if we keep the exam as an application requirement. As I touched on in the meeting, the larger issue is the ongoing conversation over standardized testing and what barriers it creates for applicants, especially underrepresented applicants, during more typical application cycles. As the university discusses its anti-racism planning, standardized testing requirements have been an area of concern as an unnecessary form of admissions gatekeeping.
I encourage departments to evaluate how they are using the exam in making admission decisions and whether they deem it an important criterion measure in gauging the success of a student. The conversation around equity, diversity recruitment, and the role of standardized tests has been happening for years, but in the past three years we have seen more universities backing away from requiring the exam. Some programs have gone test optional, but that can present problems. Unfortunately, though not the intent, being test optional might exacerbate the equity issues because students may read “optional” as being required, believe they will be disadvantaged if they don’t provide scores, and application reviewers are at risk of unconscious bias when considering applicants who submitted scores in the same pool of applicants who have not submitted scores. In all of these cases, GRE scores are used as a gatekeeping tool, increasing barriers in access for underrepresented students across identity markers.
If you still find that GRE scores are a valuable tool, please consider whether there are alternatives that you could use for assessment such as prerequisite courses, a focus on writing samples, or prior coursework/transcripts. I have provided a list of articles below which discuss schools moving away from the GRE as a requirement, research that has been done questioning whether the GRE is actually tied to student success, and the concerns over equity and access. I hope that these articles can help with your conversations.
Resources:
- Grad School Without the GRE. Brown follows Princeton in letting departments decide whether to require the admissions test
- GRE fails to identify successful Ph.D. students
- First a Trickle and Then a Surge: Why More Grad Schools Are Going GRE-Optional
- Graduate programs drop GRE after online version raises concern about fairness
- More than 90 Pitt graduate programs no longer require the GRE
- A Case for Equity: SPH Drops GRE Admissions Requirement (Boston University)
- The Limitations of the GRE in Predicting Success in Biomedical Graduate School
- The Problem with the GRE. The exam is a proxy for asking “‘Are you rich?’ ‘Are you White?’ ‘Are you male?’”
- Why are Universities Dropping GRE Requirements?
- New Study by Team Led by UMass Amherst Researcher Finds GRE Scores Are Not Predictive of STEM Doctoral Degree Completion
- An Unlikely Campaign to Move Beyond GRE Scores (2016 - not current but shows that ETS has been trying to respond to these concerns for several years)
- Inside the Graduate-Admissions Process. A study finds the pervasive misuse of test scores and too much homophily. (2016)