The career gains of obtaining a graduate degree are well established, but those from lower socioeconomic status (SES) and underrepresented demographic backgrounds have persistently been disadvantaged in earning those degrees. We aim to contribute to research on enhancing access, diversity, and equity to graduate education by providing insights…

The charge for speech-language pathology graduate admission committees is to identify candidates who will be successful academically and clinically in graduate school, all the while ensuring career readiness. This retrospective study focused on graduate admission criteria and students 'academic and clinical outcomes, for eighty students that…

The growing concern of doctoral student persistence has increased exponentially in higher education over the past decade. The body of research presented in this dissertation examines the complex phenomenon of persistence and possible pathways to addressing the dilemma of deteriorating academic persistence for doctoral students. It explores and…

One argument for keeping the physics Graduate Record Exam (GRE) is that it can help applicants who might otherwise be missed in the admissions process stand out. In this work, we evaluate whether this claim is supported by physics graduate school admissions decisions. We used admissions data from five Ph.D.-granting physics departments over a…

This quantitative study of one doctoral department at a regional, state-supported university located in the Southeastern United States used descriptive, parametric, and non-parametric methods to determine the relationships between gender and each of the academic or graduation factors. Graduation rates were analyzed for doctoral students admitted…

This meta-analysis assesses the predictive validity of the Graduate Record Examination (GRE) across outcome variables, including grade point average, for graduate students. In addition to aggregate effects, this paper also assessed changes in observed effects over time as related to increasing diversity in the graduate student population and as a…

Despite limiting access to applicants from underrepresented racial and ethnic groups, the practice of using hard or soft Graduate Record Examination (GRE) cutoff scores in physics graduate program admissions is still a popular method for reducing the pool of applicants. The present study considers whether the undergraduate institutions of…

There is interest in admission criteria that predict future success in biomedical graduate school programs, but identifying predictors of PhD attainment is inherently complex. In particular, high noncompletion rates of PhD programs have long been recognized as a major crisis. Here, we present a quantitative analysis of the PhD students enrolled in…

An analysis of 1955 physics graduate students from 19 Ph.D. programs shows that undergraduate grade point average predicts graduate grades and Ph.D. completion more effectively than GRE scores. Students' undergraduate GPA (UGPA) and GRE Physics (GRE-P) scores are small but statistically significant predictors of graduate course grades, while GRE…

College and university admission testing requirements often serve as a barrier to many students seeking advanced degrees. Many graduate school admission boards/committees use the minimum testing requirement as a predictor variable to explain a student's chance for success in a program. Before the 2020 Fall semester, many graduate schools required…

The United States continues to be a top destination for international students pursuing an advanced degree. Some information about the characteristics of international students applying to graduate programs in the United States is available, but little is known about how these characteristics are related to test taker performance on graduate…

Gathering a diverse student body is important for institutions of higher education (IHEs) at the graduate/professional level. However, it is impossible to select a diverse student body from a homogenous group of candidates. Thus the aim of this study is to discover the extent to which diversity goals in admissions are precluded by the lack of…

As systematic inequities in higher education and society have been brought to the forefront, graduate programs are interested in increasing the diversity of their applicants and enrollees. Yet, structures in place to evaluate applicants may not support such aims. One potential solution to support those aims is rubricbased holistic review. Starting…

We conducted two studies to replicate and extend, as well as test, the limits of previous findings regarding an apparent disconnect between scientific-reasoning skills in psychological science, on the one hand, and scores on standardized tests of general intelligence, on the other. In Study 1, we examined whether this disconnect would extend…

Previous research on calculator use in standardized assessments of quantitative ability focused on the effect of calculator availability on item difficulty and on whether test developers can predict these effects. With the introduction of an on-screen calculator on the Quantitative Reasoning measure of the "GRE"® revised General Test, it…