CSD PhD Admissions: A Few Proposed Changes

Todd C. MowryCSD Faculty MeetingSept. 20, 2001

3 Steps in Getting Excellent PhD Students into Our Program

1. Get the right people to apply2. Admit the right people3. Recruit those people to come here

Steps 1 & 3 are where the game is won or lost there is room for improvement here!

But today I will be focusing on Step 2

What Does the CSD PhD Admissions Committee Do?

Phase 1: filter out obvious rejects remaining folders are placed in bins for faculty

review huge public service!

Phase 2: produce a ranking list (A1, A2, B1, B2, etc.) based heavily on faculty input

Resulting list helps Randy make the actual admissions decisions

The Good News

The quality of the output from the committee is quite high I felt very good about our list last year (Thanks, Steven!)

Improving the quality further is not a major concern

The Bad News

Time spent on admissions over one’s career:

0

Effort

Year in One’s Career

I would prefer that it look more like this

Goals of My Proposed Changes

Make serving on the admissions committee less onerous

Give people who are not on the admissions committee more of a stake in the process

Why Should We Make the Admissions Committee Less Onerous?

We can do so without sacrificing quality We want people to be eager to serve on the

admissions committee We should conserve our energy for recruiting

the best recruiters are people who were involved with admissions!

but these people are exhausted under our current system

Why Should People Who Are Not on the Committee be More Involved?

They can provide valuable input Give them more confidence in the system Get them fired up for recruiting!

Admissions Committee vs. Program Committees

Program committees are also important In contrast with admissions, most of us serve on

program committees on a regular basis There are some lessons that we can learn from

well-run program committees

How Onerous is Our Current Admissions Committee System?

6 committee members (3 faculty, 3 students) Phase 1: narrow down ~600 folders to ~150

folders each folder is read by one group of 2 people each person reads ~200 folders over 3 weeks get together and discuss each case with

partner Phase 2: read all folders that pass phase 1

another ~100 folders over 1.5 weeks discussed over a 3-day long meeting

How Can We Reduce the Workload?

Make the committee larger! e.g., increase it from 6 to 12 people

Make workload inversely proportional to committee size: Phase 1: no changes needed Phase 2: each folder read by 6 people (not the full

committee); more similar to a program committee

Cutting the workload in half would make a huge difference in how much this impacts one’s life more in line with serving on a program committee

Getting Other People More Involved

Areas are encouraged to do the following during faculty review week: Meet once or twice as a group (e.g., over lunch)

to review folderscan discuss them with your colleagues!

Near the end of the week, meet to do a “dry run” of the ranking (A1, A2, B1, B2), including rationale

representative from admissions committee will attend and present that info during admissions meeting

this ranking will be taken very seriously!

Summary: 3 Steps Revisited

1. Get the right people to apply2. Admit the right people3. Recruit those people to come here

Admissions should be the easy part. Let’s find new ways to improve Steps 1 &

3!