<p>does affirmative action play a role in acceptance into phd programs ???</p>
<p>most programs are so small it seems odd to me that this would be a part of it.</p>
<p>I was talking to a professor about grad school (thinking about entering divinity school) and he made a comment to me to make think that there is some type of affirmative action, official or unoffical, that takes places in PhD programs. This professor is Indian (South Asian) American and I'm black. He basically told me that my race would definitely help me since there aren't a lot of AAs that go in graduate Religion programs.</p>
<p>I don't know if PhD programs have quotas though.</p>
<p>No, there are no quotas and affirmative action is quite limited in graduate admissions. You have hundreds of students applying for 5-10 PhD spots at the most competitive programs each year. Minorities are quite underrepresented at the PhD level.</p>
<p>Depends on the field but I don't think programs necessarily have quotas but affirmative action is prevalent.</p>
<p>There is no way affirmative action plays any role at top phd programs. At lesser programs, it's possible, although I highly doubt it's prevalent.</p>
<p>
[quote]
There is no way affirmative action plays any role at top phd programs. At lesser programs, it's possible
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Please explain. Are 'lesser' programs somehow more inclined to promote affirmative action policies?</p>
<p>There are no quotas, period. However, at some universities, including "top" programs, the Graduate School will provide an incentive for diversifying the pool of accepted students. Often, this incentive is an extra assistantship, or another type of funding.</p>
<p>And "diversifying" can mean different things in different contexts. For example, it can mean admitting more women to a Physics program, or more students of color to a Classics program, or more first-generation college students in general.</p>
<p>note to modern_muslimah,</p>
<p>MDivs are different. In MA/PhD programs in Religion, it is as I described above. But MDivs are preparation for ministry, and thus many programs actively and explicitly implement affirmative action.</p>
<p>contrary to popular belief, i believe affirmative action is quite prevalent in graduate school admissions. i also believe it is quite prevalent in fellowship and scholarship applications. i base this claim on the experiences of several graduate students applying to either graduate school and/or NSF or comparable fellowships. maybe it's a good thing, maybe it's not -- the truth is, it is prevalent.</p>
<p>
[quote]
does affirmative action play a role in acceptance into phd programs ???
[/quote]
</p>
<p>
[quote]
There is no way affirmative action plays any role at top phd programs
[/quote]
</p>
<p>
[quote]
No, there are no quotas and affirmative action is quite limited in graduate admissions.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>
[quote]
There are no quotas, period. However, at some universities, including "top" programs, the Graduate School will provide an incentive for diversifying the pool of accepted students.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>
[quote]
contrary to popular belief, i believe affirmative action is quite prevalent in graduate school admissions
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Well, I don't know if this 'counts' as diversification, and certainly doesn't seem to count as affirmative action, but I would say that certain programs clearly display a certain preference for certain types of people. </p>
<p>If you want to talk about high-prestige programs, then let's talk about Harvard Business School (HBS). Anybody who has been around HBS should have noted the unusually high proportion of Mormons that exist there, even - perhaps especially - in the doctoral programs and in the faculty. This phenomenon is so inescapable that the HBS student body was recently and infamously characterized by a recent book via the "3 M's": military, McKinsey, and Mormons. </p>
<p>Barbarians</a> on the Charles | The New York Observer</p>
<p>How can that be possible? Obviously nobody really knows for sure, but does the fact that, until just recently, the Dean of HBS, Kim Clark is himself a Mormon have anything to do with it? Is that really a coincidence? Is it really a coincidence that Kim Clark's own son happens to be a current PhD student at HBS? Or that HBS's arguably most famous professor, Clay Christensen, who popularized the theory of disruptive innovation, is a Mormon? </p>
<p>Hey, don't get me wrong. I'm not saying it's bad. I like the Mormons. I'm just saying that I think it's hard to believe that there can be so many Mormons at HBS purely by chance. I've known numerous people who have said that they have never known a single Mormon person in their life...until they came to HBS where they can't avoid them even if they wanted to. </p>
<p>One may also consider the example of former Massachusetts Governor and 2008 Republican candidate for President. He's a Mormon. He went to HBS. Then three of his sons went to HBS. {His other 2 sons never went to business school at all; one became a doctor, the other went into the music industry.} Now, granted, I can see that those 3 sons who became businessmen would probably would have all gone to top business schools given their elite family upbringing. So you might expect one to go to, say, Stanford GSB and another to go to maybe Wharton. But for all three to go to HBS? Really? </p>
<p>I'll give you a possibly even more egregious example. Take the HBS doctoral program in marketing. Generally, that program only matriculates 1 or 2 students a year. In one recent year, the program admitted 2 new doctoral students, both of whom happened to have come from the nation of Turkey. Interestingly enough, those students were brought in about the same time as two other Turkish doctoral students in the marketing program recently graduated. I don't know about you, but that seems to me to be a whole lot of coincidences. {Again, don't get me wrong; I like the Turks. I just never realized that Turkey was such a "marketing powerhouse" such that HBS would keep bringing so many of them in, almost as if there's a minimal "Turkish quota" that the department always has to have.}</p>
<p>I've been apart of engineering graduate admissions at two schools now and I can say its not prevalent and practically nonexistent. Professors would never make the investment of time and money for a weaker student over someone else.</p>
<p>
[quote]
I've been apart of engineering graduate admissions at two schools now and I can say its not prevalent and practically nonexistent. Professors would never make the investment of time and money for a weaker student over someone else.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Well, I think you're assuming that such students really would be necessarily 'weaker', which means we have to define what that exactly means. </p>
<p>I think it may have more to do with the fact that professors want to admit PhD students who they would be comfortable working with, and that may mean choosing students of a certain background. For example, to continue the story of the HBS marketing program, one prof who successfully chaired the committee of and coauthored papers with one Turkish student who recently graduated and successfully placed is now coincidentally the advisor (and possible future chair) of the 2 "replacement" Turkish students. It is logical to think that once you find success working with one Turk, you may want to work with other Turks.</p>
<p>Hence, 'weaker' may simply mean the inability to work with the faculty. From an admissions standpoint, it doesn't really matter how brilliant you are if you just can't get along with the faculty, because at the end of the day, faculty members are going to have to agree to serve on your committee. They're not going to want to do that if they don't even like you.</p>
<p>MIT</a> Department of Biology: Current Graduate Students</p>
<p>MIT seems to go out of its way to show you the diversity it has in its bio grad program. It sort of cracks me up when programs are really specific about the exact percentage of students of each race. Like I would decide to go to one school because it had 32% Asian students vs. another school with 36% Asian students.</p>
<p>Let me tell you this much, and this is just my opinion. If you have an African American, or any other underrepresented minority applicant that is pretty much evenly matched with a white applicant or overrepresented group, I think they will give the nod to the minority applicant. I think that is when the "afirmitive action" comes into play, when two applicants are pretty much neck and neck, and you need some other criterion to judge them by. I have a feeling this is true for women who apply to math phd programs. </p>
<p>Now I'm not saying a minority applicant can or should have a crappier application and get in over someone who has a better one. But when it is marginal, they both have X GPA, Y GRE's, good letters, what else are you going to use to separate them?</p>
<p>The bottom line is if you don't share similar research interests with the professors of the school to which you are applying, your chances of admittance to their PhD program is extremely low. If the professors don't like you, your chances of admittance are still extremely low whether you have high grades and test scores and solid research.</p>
<p>I think people are confused as to how engineering admissions works for some of the top schools. In engineering grad school, personality has a direct impact on funding but not on admission. The professors, after all, interview all accepted applicants to determine who gets funding. On determining who gets accepted however, its more of a stats oriented process in engineering without a focus on race. If people do have low stats, their letters of recommendation and research accomplishments will have a greater influence on whether or not they get admitted. In cases where the GRE and GPA substantially deviates from the applicant's academic profile, a followup phone call to the applicant's advisor might occur if there is trouble reading between the lines of the LOR. If this applicant is borderline academically, they will need a stellar interview (one in which professors might be inclined to question/test them more) to secure funding. The latter is still a function of research interests. You might be the same race, from the same country, or from the same school as the interviewing professor, but if you can't speak with coherence on the topics at hand, you won't get funding over someone else.</p>
<p>
[quote]
I think people are confused as to how engineering admissions works for some of the top schools. In engineering grad school, personality has a direct impact on funding but not on admission.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Well, let me put it to you this way. One particular department at one top engineering school that shall remain unnamed immediately comes to mind where not only the top faculty in the department tend to come from certain countries, but a conspicuously large number of the PhD students also tend to come from those very same countries. Coincidence? Perhaps. But I don't think that's likely. I think it's more likely that professors, just like anybody else, prefer to work with people who are similar to them.</p>
<p>What you're stating is obvious. But I doubt its as significant a factor as you think. I had interviews at most of the top schools (including MIT which is most likely the school you are referring to since you focus on harvard an MIT)beyond the ones which I've helped during admissions and they gave me a pretty frank view of the admissions and funding selection process. Its more meritocratic than people think.</p>
<p>As a minority, I have personally been aware of opportunities (within the graduate school community) only available to underrepresented minorities. However this is not affirmative action. Like someone else said, there are certain forms of funding that are only available for particular groups of people (women, minorities, disabled, low-income, first generation, etc...). Much of graduate school depends on funding. It you have funding, you can study.</p>
<p>It's also slightly disturbing, from my point of view, to see such a lack of diversity in many graduate programs. I would hope that diversity (whether race, religion, nationality, language, age, etc...) is considered during admissions.</p>
<p>^^</p>
<p>why? (10char)</p>