US Geoscience programmes drop controversial admissions test

Geoscience graduate programmes across the United States are increasingly dropping a controversial standardized test from their admissions requirements.

The graduate record examinations (GRE), which was introduced in 1949, aims to measure verbal and quantitative reasoning, analytical writing and critical thinking. In recent years, academic researchers and others have criticized the test, claiming that it unfairly weeds out capable students and restricts the flow of women and people from minority ethnic groups into the sciences.

Geosciences departments began to eliminate it as an admissions requirement last year. The trend, dubbed GeoGRExit, has gained impetus as programmes seek to maintain numbers of graduate applications in the face of the coronavirus pandemic. But the geosciences have trailed behind other scientific disciplines. So far, more than 300 biology and biomedical graduate programmes have dropped the test, according to a list maintained by Joshua Hall, director of graduate admissions for the biological and biomedical sciences programme at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Some 62 US geosciences programmes no longer require applicants to submit GRE results, according to a database maintained by Sarah Ledford, an urban hydrologist at Georgia State University in Atlanta. Around half of those have dropped the requirement since 4 June, when the American Geophysical Union’s weekly news magazine, Eos, published an opinion piece calling for the test to be abandoned. It argued that eliminating the GRE could help to boost diversity in one of science’s most exclusive disciplines.