Caltech Waives Graduate Record Exam Requirement Due to Pandemic

In response to the hardships created by the now-six-month-long coronavirus pandemic, every division at Caltech has suspended requirements for prospective students to submit Graduate Record Examination scores for at least one year, the university announced Thursday.

Each division, and in some cases specific options within a division, set their own admittance requirements, Caltech said in a written statement.

“In light of the COVID-19 pandemic, Caltech graduate admissions in each division will not require applicants to submit Graduate Record Examination scores,” according to the statement. “The GRE has historically been used as a component of evaluation for admission to graduate programs at many universities.”

With social distancing mandates and reduced opportunities for students to take the GRE, Caltech’s academic leaders decided it was not appropriate to continue requiring the exam for consideration, said Caltech’s Fiona Hudson, Harold A. Rosen Professor of Physics and Kent and Joyce Kresa Leadership Chair of the Division of Physics, Mathematics, and Astronomy.

“While they can in principle be taken at home, the computer platform and camera requirements limit this option to students with enough money to purchase the specialized equipment, which we consider to be overtly discriminatory based on socioeconomic status,” the professor said.

None of Caltech’s 31 graduate options will mandate GRE scores for 2021-2022, the Caltech statement said. Twenty-nine of them will not accept them, while having made GRE scores optional “with the understanding that not providing scores will have no impact upon an applicant’s admission portfolio.”

Officials had expressed concerns over standardized testing and its usefulness in college admissions well before the pandemic hit, according to Dean of Graduate Students, Roscoe Gilkey Dickinson Professor of Chemistry and Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator Doug Rees

“Barriers to taking the GREs during the pandemic have magnified concerns about systematic biases in standardized tests, the associated financial burden to applicants, and how well the scores are correlated with performance in graduate school,” Rees said. “A silver lining to the pandemic is that it has catalyzed this movement toward evaluating applications without standardized exams.”

Some divisions suspended the requirement for one to two years. Others did away with it entirely.

The GRE requirement has been eliminated entirely by some options, whereas others have suspended the requirement for one to two years.

“A careful evaluation of the role of standardized tests in admission to Caltech going forward is part of the charge to the advisory committee of faculty, students, and staff that is being constituted to ensure the institute is identifying and attracting the best and brightest candidates from every background,” according to the statement.

The move should provide a learning experience to inform future policies, Fletcher Jones Professor of Geology and Ted and Ginger Jenkins Leadership Chair of Caltech’s Division of Geological and Planetary Science John Grotzinger said.

The COVID situation has created the basis for an easy consensus to do an experiment and see how this goes, in terms of how we will alternatively evaluate graduate admissions in the Division of Geological and Planetary Science (GPS),” Grotzinger said. “We will reassess at this time next year.”