Related papers: Range restriction, admissions criteria, and correl…
In this work, I point out the negative implications for diversity in graduate school resulting from the use of cutoff scores on the GRE in the admissions process. In light of the data presented, as well as a swelling body of evidence…
Machine learning models are often used to make predictions about admissions process outcomes, such as for colleges or jobs. However, such decision processes differ substantially from the conventional machine learning paradigm. Because…
Despite limiting access to applicants from underrepresented racial and ethnic groups, the practice of using hard or soft GRE cut-off scores in physics graduate program admissions is still a popular method for reducing the pool of…
A recent paper evaluating a new rubric-based graduate admissions approach using generic methods tentatively suggested that its decisions differed noticeably from the previous approach in an unspecified way. Using prior knowledge that the…
We study a game theoretic model of standardized testing for college admissions. Students are of two types; High and Low. There is a college that would like to admit the High type students. Students take a potentially costly standardized…
Bias detection and mitigation is an active area of research in machine learning. This work extends previous research done by the authors to provide a rigorous and more complete analysis of the bias found in AI predictive models. Admissions…
Each year, selective American colleges sort through tens of thousands of applications to identify a first-year class that displays both academic merit and diversity. In the 2023-2024 admissions cycle, these colleges faced unprecedented…
We study the role of information and access in capacity-constrained selection problems with fairness concerns. We develop a statistical discrimination framework, where each applicant has multiple features and is potentially strategic. The…
We study how the design of admissions policies affects the ability of students admitted to universities. In our model, applicants have a multi-dimensional ability, which is a combination of a "type" and a "soft skill." Universities may…
Randomized controlled trials are not only the golden standard in medicine and vaccine trials but have spread to many other disciplines like behavioral economics, making it an important interdisciplinary tool for scientists. When designing…
The ETS has recently released new estimates of validities of the GRE for predicting cumulative graduate GPA. They average in the middle thirties - twice as high as those previously reported by a number of independent investigators. It is…
Every year, over one million EU students choose a secondary school track based on teacher recommendations, yet little evidence shows this yields optimal assignments. Using Dutch data, we examine whether access to standardized test scores…
The participants in randomized trials and other studies used for causal inference are often not representative of the populations seen by clinical decision-makers. To account for differences between populations, researchers may consider…
There are many factors that can influence the outcome for students in a mathematics PhD program: bachelor's GPA (BGPA), bachelor's major, GRE scores, gender, Under-Represented Minority (URM) status, institution tier, etc. Are these…
A variety of fairness constraints have been proposed in the literature to mitigate group-level statistical bias. Their impacts have been largely evaluated for different groups of populations corresponding to a set of sensitive attributes,…
In this paper, we study university admissions under a centralized system that uses grades and standardized test scores to match applicants to university programs. We consider affirmative action policies that seek to increase the number of…
While acute stress has been shown to have both positive and negative effects on performance, not much is known about the impacts of stress on students grades during examinations. To answer this question, we examined whether a correlation…
We use variation of test scores measuring closely related skills to isolate peer effects. The intuition for our identification strategy is that the difference in closely related scores eliminates factors common to the performance in either…
Many U.S. colleges now use test-optional admissions. A frequent claim is that by not seeing standardized test scores, a college can admit a student body it prefers, say with more diversity. But how can observing less information improve…
Mean Opinion Score (MOS) is a popular measure for evaluating synthesized speech. However, the scores obtained in MOS tests are heavily dependent upon many contextual factors. One such factor is the overall range of quality of the samples…