Standardized test requirements for graduate school applications, which can cost students hundreds of dollars, are seen as socioeconomic barriers to higher education that also aren’t very effective at predicting success.
Those reasons, backed up by several studies, are why more and more programs at the University of Arizona, and at universities nationwide, are dropping the Graduate Record Examination (GRE) requirement that has long been part of admissions.
Nearly 300 biomedical and biological sciences graduate programs across the U.S. have recently removed the GRE from their applications, according to data collected by Joshua Hall of the University of North Carolina.
Graduate programs representing nearly all disciplines at the UA have begun removing the GRE from their applications, as well.
“This has been a long time coming,” said Frans Tax, professor and faculty director of diversity and inclusion at the UA Graduate College.
Meucci Ilunga is among the UA students who strongly support the removal of GRE requirements.
Ilunga, who enrolled at the UA at just 16 years of age, is now a senior studying biochemistry. He plans to apply to biology and bioengineering graduate programs at Stanford and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Neither of these programs require GRE scores.
Identifying as Zairian Navajo, Ilunga is originally from a small community in Kinlichee, Arizona, within the Navajo Nation. His mother is Navajo, and his father is Luba from the Democratic Republic of Congo, formerly the Republic of Zaire.
Ilunga said he is passionate about issues that negatively affect his tribe, such as the barrier to higher ed caused by the GRE requirement that “affects the quality of life of (his) people.”
Evidence against GRE
In 2017, researchers from the University of North Carolina found no correlation between GRE scores and student productivity in the UNC Biological and Biomedical Sciences Program.
The research team defined productivity as first-author publications and the time to degree.
Predicting a student’s success based on the GRE is like “crystal balls and tea leaves,” said Jeanette Cook, the associate dean for graduate education at UNC and corresponding author of the 2017 study.
Recommendation letters were found to be more telling, Cook said.
A related 2017 study in the Vanderbilt University Interdisciplinary Graduate Program found that GRE scores were not significantly correlated with several measures of program progress and research productivity.
Only first-semester grades and graduate GPA were predicted by verbal and quantitative GRE scores.
These findings prompted an investigation that yielded similar results at the UA, said Daniela Zarnescu, director of the Arizona Biological and Biomedical Sciences graduate program at the UA.
“These standardized tests are known to disadvantage racial and ethnic minorities,” said Christopher Robertson, associate dean and professor at the UA’s James E. Rogers College of Law.
“By requiring us to use these standardized tests ... we are actually exacerbating or perpetuating the issues of institutional racism or institutional class.”
The UA law school removed the Law School Admission Test (LSAT) requirement from its applications a few years ago. Now, students can submit scores from either the LSAT or GRE.
The UA School of Journalism chose to remove the GRE requirement in part because of the cost and hassle for students, said its director, Carol Schwalbe.
A student from Botswana, for example, had to travel to South Africa just to take the GRE to apply to the program, Schwalbe said.
The cost of the exam ranges from $205 to $255 across the globe, so the additional travel expenses to take the exam added to the financial barrier.
The student did not choose to attend the UA, Schwalbe said.
Standardized tests also fail to speak to a student’s “perseverance, creativity” and emotional quotient, Schwalbe said.
Those factors may be good indicators of success for some disciplines, she said.
Jennifer Croissant, head of Gender and Women’s Studies at the UA, said that their program also chose to remove the requirement this year because it doesn’t predict success and it perpetuates inequity.
In addition, soon-to-be graduate student Ilunga said, the GRE material does not reflect key principles learned in graduate school.
“It’s not preparing me to be a scientist,” he said. “It’s preparing me to be a better test taker.”
Resistance to change
However, scientists who believe “numbers tell the truth” might be reluctant to drop the GRE from their applications, Tax, of the UA Graduate College, said.
Mark Wallace, dean of the Vanderbilt University Graduate School, agreed, saying engineering programs are particularly resistant to dropping the GRE because of the belief that the quantitative GRE component may hold predictive value.
“If (they’re) going to make that argument, it can’t simply be anecdotal,” he said.
GRE scores are required for students applying to the UA’s biomedical engineering graduate program. U.S. News factors GRE scores into engineering program rankings, making the test important to the program, said Andrea Anduaga, graduate academic advisor of the program.
Another barrier to removing the GRE is the academic institution.
Professional programs often are unable to remove the standardized test requirement because it is necessary for accreditation.
The UA law school was unable to drop the requirement, Robertson said, because its accreditor, the American Bar Association, considers student scores from a “valid and reliable standardized test” in its evaluation process.
However, Robertson said he compared the LSAT to the GRE and found that the GRE had similar predictive power as the LSAT in determining first-year law school grades for UA students. Students with the highest grades are most likely to pass the bar exam.
unforeseen Consequences
Students may apply to more schools at the same time because of the reduced barrier, said the University of North Carolina’s Cook.
In the first application cycle after removing the GRE requirement, applications to the UNC program increased by 20%, Cook said. This year, applications increased another 10%.
“We don’t want to encourage people to apply to 20 schools,” Cook said. “We don’t want to make it too easy for a student to apply.”
The UA’s Biological and Biomedical Sciences program received 50% more applications in the first cycle after removing the GRE requirement, Zarnescu said.
However, the application cost and the amount of effort required to prepare a strong application might prohibit students from applying to every school that does not require the GRE, Zarnescu said.
The comparison of applicants who do and do not choose to submit their scores poses another potential issue, Zarnescu said. Despite removing the requirement this year, the program’s executive committee still allowed students to submit GRE scores.
An applicant may submit their scores to make up for a weakness in another area, Zarnescu said. And some reviewers might be interested in taking those scores into account.
“I personally don’t think we should look at it at all because then it puts people on different levels,” Zarnescu said.
To mitigate this problem, Zarnescu said she instructed the committee to focus on students’ personal statements, recommendation letters and extracurricular activities to rank applicants.
Students applying to the UA School of Journalism are also allowed to submit GRE scores, Schwalbe said, but most students do not.
The review committee may “take notice if a student does really well,” she said, or may factor scores into decisions regarding financial assistance for the student.
