Admissions practices in terminal master’s degree-granting physics departments: A comparative analysis

Abstract

There has been little work done in exploring the variations in admissions practices between different types of physics graduate programs. In this paper, we compared admissions practices in master’s programs to a parallel data set collected from doctoral departments to understand the relative importance of particular admission criteria and looked especially at similar sized and “pressured” programs (as measured by the ratio of applications received-to-intended cohort size). We found that master’s programs experience notably lower application pressure compared to doctoral programs overall. In the prioritization of admission criteria, undergraduate course-taking and undergraduate math and physics GPA received the shared highest priority, while recommendation letters and Graduate Record Examination (GRE) quantitative scores are the next important criteria but are statistically less important for master’s programs in comparison with doctoral programs. In the targeted comparison of similarly sized and pressured master’s and doctoral programs, the higher importance of GRE quantitative scores and the lower importance of prior research considerations in master’s programs persist. We argue that the relatively lower importance placed on the quantitative GRE and physics subject GRE scores enhances the likelihood of success for undergraduates applying to master’s programs, particularly for those who did not take or score well on the quantitative GRE and physics subject GRE test, which have been found to incorporate significant biases against many students but are nonetheless normative in many admissions decisions. The research and graduate level course experiences gained through a master’s program may improve postgraduate job opportunities or even continuation on to doctoral research. However, the shared importance of certain factors in admissions between master’s and doctoral programs risks propagating a systematic inequity.