Unstandardized Admissions
Crimson | ALEXANDER I. FUNG, PATON D. ROBERTS, AND ERIC YAN
Harvard graduate school programs are split on the role that standardized tests should play in admissions. In The Graduate School of Arts & Sciences, 24 of 76 degree-granting programs required the GRE in 2021. Others, such as the Divinity School, HGSE and the Harvard School of Public Health removed the requirement for now.
“As graduate schools ponder the future of standardized testing in their admissions process, some students, administrators, and higher education experts argue that testing requirements impose financial and logistical hurdles that limit the diversity of applicant pools.”
One proponent of lifting the GRE requirement is the Astronomy department. “If you know only someone’s [GRE] test score, the thing you can best predict actually is their race and gender,” he [the Astronomy department’s chair of graduate admissions] said. “Since we can just ask people about that without charging them any money, we thought there was no need to do that.”
“Since the Astronomy department led the shift away from standardized testing for Harvard’s graduate programs,” the authors explain, “several schools across the University have followed suit.”
“[Yet] despite the growing popularity of test-optional admissions, many schools [such as HLS] have yet to make the switch.”
Related: HGSE Experts Split on Benefits of Standardized Testing
