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In its first year, 20% of the 250 active Earth and space science graduate programs in the United States applied for partnership with the program.

Underrepresented minority students make up a third of college-age US citizens and earn roughly 18% of US chemistry bachelor’s degrees and 11% of chemistry PhDs, according to data from the National Center for Education Statistics’ Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System.

Even if wealthy parents don't resort to the kind of illegal tactics in the recent college cheating scandal revealed by the FBI, the college admission process still favors the rich, scholars argue.

A team of researchers led by Rochester Institute of Technology Professor and Associate Dean for Research and Faculty Casey Miller completed a multivariate statistical analysis of about one in eight physics Ph.D. students from 2000 to 2010.  They discovered that while women and underrepresented minorities tend to perform worse on the GRE Physics Subject Test, students’ performance had no bearing on Ph.D. completion. Undergraduate GPA was the most robust predictor of Ph.D. completion they found. 

Exams that US students need to take before being allowed into graduate school are not a reliable way of assessing whether those candidates will successfully complete a PhD. That is the claim of new research, which shows that the over-reliance on the Graduate Record Examination (GRE) in PhD admissions also discriminates against under-represented groups.

Researchers are urging universities across the United States to find a new way to identify the next generation of scientists. A new study discovered that traditional admissions metrics for physics Ph.D. programs such as the Graduate Record Examination (GRE) do not predict completion and hurt the growth of diversity in physics, which is already the least diverse of the sciences.

...The data shows that the GRE gives us no predictive information on who will succeed in graduate school (even among men) and simultaneously acts to weed out people of color and underrepresented minorities and, as a whole, doesn’t help women applicants either.

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The American Chemical Society has been awarded a $2.3 million grant over five years from the National Science Foundation as part of an alliance of scientific societies to increase the participation of women and underrepresented minorities in graduate education in the physical sciences. The Inclusive Graduate Education Network is a five-year, $10 million grant led by the American Physical Society (APS). 

APS has joined forces with four other scientific societies—the American Chemical Society, the American Geophysical Union, the American Astronomical Society, and the Materials Research Society—to increase participation of underrepresented students in graduate physical science programs. The five societies make up the Inclusive Graduate Education Network (IGEN) that will be funded with a five-year $10 million grant from the National Science Foundation.

Rochester Institute of Technology is helping to build a national network for improving access to graduate education for underrepresented students in science, technology, engineering and mathematics.