Next year, Brown University applicants won’t need to provide Graduate Records Examination (GRE) scores for 24 of the school’s doctoral programs. The aim is to increase the number of underrepresented graduate students, who sometimes struggle to afford GRE prep courses, tutoring and exam fees.
“The future success of graduate education at Brown depends on the diverse, innovative and intellectually independent candidates we admit and the varied skill sets they bring to their disciplines,” said Graduate School Dean Dr. Andrew G. Campbell.
Each program at the university now has the option to eliminate the score requirement.
“We’re looking for the fire — we’re looking for the drive,” said Dr. Anita Zimmerman, graduate program director for molecular pharmacology and physiology. “We’re looking for the motivation from someone who isn’t daunted by obstacles and is willing to dive into research with creativity and an ability to solve difficult problems. Those kinds of indicators are not easy to put into numbers, but they’re much more useful and telling than a score on an exam that repeatedly has been shown to be a very poor predictor of student success.”
