Recruiting and Selecting Students for Admission to Your Graduate Program

Recruiting and Selecting Students for Admission to Your Graduate Program ROBERT ALLEN FOX Department of Speech and Hearing Science The Ohio State University 2002 Annual Conference Council of Academic Programs in Communication Sciences and Disorders

Recruitment and Selection Some Preliminary Considerations

Self-Identity as the Starting Point • How well do you know your own program (strengths, weaknesses, student interest, national/state standing)? • How have you determined these data (e.g., surveys)? • Are members of your faculty/staff in agreement?

What Students Do You Want to Attract? • MA, AuD, or PhD Students? • Clinic-based students or research-based students? (Where will they be employed after graduation?) • Within-state or out-of state students? (Consider the domain within which you have been successful in recruiting or want to be successful in recruiting).

What Is The Background/Preparation of Your Students? • From traditional Communication Disorders majors or in related fields? • Have or lack strong science backgrounds. • Have or lack undergraduate experience (including practicum) in actual clinical practice and clients.

What are the Strengths of Your Program (Recruitment Tools) • Nature of your facility (clinical space, research labs, offices, student rooms, classrooms, access to computers and networking) • Strength of Faculty/Staff • External clinical practicum sites (and quality of those staff members) • Do you exploit your strengths in recruiting?

What Are Program Weaknesses? *Other programs may know and exploit them, even if you don’t know them. • What content areas and/or clinical areas do you address in a less-than-optimal manner? • What do you tell prospective students (whether or not they ask)? • Can you realistically improve this in the future (and have you taken steps in that direction), and if so, do you communicate this fact?

College/University Support • Do you have the support of your Dean? • Do you have the support of your Undergraduate Advisors (gatekeepers into your UG program whose students might become graduate students)? • Can you apply for funds to help your recruitment process (e.g., to develop a better website, brochures, etc.)?

Program Planning • How well articulated (and funded) are your short-term goals and how do they fit into your program’s recruitment plans? • How well articulated are your long term goals (which could include the AuD, a ComDisD, etc.). Are these considered when completing current recruitment plans and strategies?

Student Recruitment and Student Selection Considerations in Developing Recruitment Strategies

Recruiting: Getting the Word Out • Does your program have an active advertising campaign (local, state-wide, national)? • Does it use (and how successfully does it use) • Direct mailings? • Newsletters? • Brochures (and are they professionally done)? • Mass emailing? • Other?

Recruiting: Getting the Word Out(continued) • How much do you rely on word of mouth (including alumni, other professionals) for advertising? • Are current students useful in recruiting (e.g., at state and national conventions)? • Are you certain the message either students or alumni provide is one you would want?

Recruiting: Getting the Word Out(continued) • Do you actively recruit at annual meetings of ASHA, AAA, ARO, ASA? How sophisticated is your marketing? How successful are you (and have you done a cost/benefit analysis)? • Do you have a specific spokesperson who can be used at local/state meetings to “drum up interest” (and development money)?

Recruiting: Getting the Word Out(continued) • Do you have Open Houses for prospective students? If so: • Who are invited? • When is it scheduled? • Who organizes it and how elaborate is it? • How much do you spend and how much is faculty/staff invested in and committed to the process?

Recruiting: Getting the Word Out(continued) • Does your program have formal (or informal) connections with an undergraduate feeder program? • If so, how do you maintain what have been successful connections in the past? or how can you improve the connection? • If not, how do you establish one? and will it be worth the trouble?

Recruitment: Student Support • What types of financial support for graduate students can and do you offer? • Fellowships • Graduate Associateships/Assistantships • Scholarships (e.g., from private sources) • Full or partial Tuition and Fee Remissions • Work Study (even at Graduate Level) • Loans (which grad students often do not consider as “support”)

Recruitment: Student Support(continued) • Research Support (e.g., subject money, access to labs and equipment). • Rooms devoted to student use (e.g., MA student room, PhD student lounge) • Access to computers, phones, library • Access to creature comforts (microwave, kitchen, etc.) • Support for students seeking employment (before and after graduation)

Recruiting Students: Increasing Diversity • How diverse is your current program (faculty, staff, and students), and what are your realistic goals for increasing diversity? (And how do you define diversity?)

Recruiting Students: Increasing Diversity (continued) • What specific recruitment strategies is your program involved in that has, as its goal, the recruitment of a diverse student population? • Links to student organizations (NBASLH) • University-sponsored events (e.g., Ohio State’s Minority Visitation Day program) • Diversity-based Fellowships (however “named”) • Links to UG programs that traditionally have more diverse student bodies

Recruiting Students: Increasing Diversity (continued) • In the recruiting process, can you explain what your program does to address these issues: • GRE may be biased against some cultural groups. • What student-support networks are available for minority students to utilize? • What “standard American English” proficiency expectations must be addressed (and how) in the classroom and/or clinic by these students?

What Have You Found To Be A Successful Approach to Recruiting? • 1. • 2. • 3. • 4. • 5. • 6.

Recruitment and Selection Considerations in Selecting and Admitting Students to Your Program

Establishing Baseline Selectional Criteria • GPA (should you weight it by reputation of UG program?) • GRE scores—which ones and what values do you seek? How good a predictor of student success is this test? • Letters of Recommendation (how much information do they really provide? how much reliance do you really place on them?)

Establishing Baseline Selectional Criteria (continued) • Personal Written Statement (part of application) • Personal Interviews • Will take an extraordinary amount of time and effort on the programs part • But may provide important information on student disposition, thinking skills, degree of commitment, etc.

Establishing Baseline Selectional Criteria (continued) • Other Considerations • Undergraduate Major • Size and reputation of student’s UG school(s) • Undergraduate clinical experience • Undergraduate research experience (e.g., honors thesis)

Increasing Diversity: Admissions • How are the materials evaluated for diverse applicants (e.g., non-American, non-native English speakers)? • GPA (often at variance with US standards) • GRE scores • TOEFL and TSE/Speak tests • Can a single, unified admissions standard be established (the apples/oranges debate)?

Increasing Diversity: Admissions(continued) • How do you evaluate English proficiency for non-American students? • TOEFL • TSE/SPEAK test • Personal interviews/letters

Other Admission Considerations • What is the start and stop dates of your admissions process? How is it affected by your competitors? • Should you have a wait list and what do you tell students on the wait list? • Do you follow “airline” procedures in admitting more students that you could possibly handle (assume loss of students)?

What Have You Found To Be A Successful Approach to Admissions? • 1. • 2. • 3. • 4. • 5. • 6.

Recruiting and Selecting Students for Admission to Your Graduate Program