Holistic Admissions
Our University’s fundamental commitments to educational excellence and inclusion remain firm: “Our institution is rooted in the idea that any qualified individual, regardless of wealth or social status, should have access to high-quality higher education. We draw from and support diverse experiences and perspectives as an essential strength of this learning community. We accept for ourselves and instill in our students an ongoing commitment to create a better, more just world.”
The best tool for achieving inclusion and excellence is Holistic Admissions (HA). The Graduate School has long been an advocate of this approach, and it is fully compliant with the Supreme Court ruling. HA does not use race as a criterion for admission. Rather, it advocates taking into account the fullest picture possible of an applicant’s experience and how this translates into their potential for success. In HA, academic programs seek to understand how the applicant (as a whole person) would grow, contribute, and succeed at UMass Amherst and how UMass Amherst would, in turn, be changed by the student. Below, we provide you with a summary of how to conduct HA. We also encourage you to attend the workshops we will be offering in the Fall on Promoting Inclusive Excellence.
Start with Data and Goal Setting
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Gather data on the demographics of your discipline nationwide so you have a baseline
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Gather data from Flagship Analytics to analyze the trends in your admissions with regard to under-represented groups
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Discuss the criteria and processes that govern how your program determines admission offers. Do individual faculty make selections? What role does funding play? Seniority? Discuss how your past practice has been working – what are its strengths and weaknesses?
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Set goals that align with your program’s mission and the values you uphold. What would be your desired composition of the admitted class?
Preparing for the admission process
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Be intentional about who serves on the admission committee.
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Include faculty members who can bring a variety of perspectives and experiences (including first generation, public vs private education, international, etc.)
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Have admissions faculty do training in implicit bias and holistic admissions
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Are your application instructions clear? Note that instructions should explicitly request the same information from all candidates, such as a resume (indicate the categories of information needed), letter of recommendation (request specific attributes to be addressed), and personal statement (provide specific prompts).
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In light of the recent Supreme Court decision, you cannot admit a person simply because of their racial identity. However, it is valid to consider how an applicant’s background and experiences impacted their education or provides evidence of their skills in overcoming adversity. Programs should consider using good prompts, such as asking candidates to describe if there are any educational, personal, cultural, economic, or social experiences that have shaped the candidate's academic journey (if so, how) OR describing challenge(s) or barriers that they have faced in their pursuit of higher education and how they overcame these barriers.
Application assessment process
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Create a rubric to score applications that includes a broad range of characteristics including overcoming adversity, potential for scholarly innovation, contribution to your admission goals
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A holistic admission process can include information about the candidate's career goals, resume, personal statement, resilience, potential for innovation in the field, contribution to the program, test score, academic suitability, interview, and transcript/GPA. The key is to use multiple factors to gauge the applicant’s academic background, fit with the program, and potential for success.
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Discuss openly the various components of your rubric. Reviews should aim to be transparent and consider all information fairly and equitably.
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Avoid using threshold scores that are determined using only undergraduate GPA and GRE scores.
Resources
https://cgsnet.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/CGS_HolisticReview_final_web.pdf
https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/feduc.2018.00017/full