Beyond the GPA

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Beyond the GPA GRELetters of Recommendation
and the new Personal Potential Index

• Jon Gottesman, Ph.D.
• orbs_at_umn.edu

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The Admissions Process

• Graduate faculty members make the decisions
• Their process revolves around the basic question,
  Would I want to have this person in my lab?
• Applying for graduate school is a job application
• Those who get hired are those whose
  applications convince the faculty that they will
  be productive employees. The job is to carry
  out experiments and publish results.
• So, what drives the decision?

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The Admissions Process

• The factors used to rank you
• GPA, Transcript GRE
• Research Experience
• Research experience is required. Without this,
  your application will not be competitive
  regardless of how good your GPA GREs are
• Personal Statement
• Interview
• You will benefit if you begin working on these 2
  elements in the spring of junior year
• Letters of Recommendation

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The Admissions Process

• The factors used to rank you
• GPA Transcript
• Overall GPA is most often used
• Major GPA will be looked at if overall is
  borderline
• Improving GPA from freshman to junior year helps
• Core science and math course grades are examined
• Find the average GPA for programs where you apply
• U of M average GPA 3.5

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The Admissions Process

• The factors used to rank you
• GPA, Transcript GRE
• Most programs pool Verbal Quantitative scores
• If anything, Quantitative scores are more
  important
• Advanced tests usually optional
• Admissions committees may overlook below average
  GPA or GRE values for candidates with great
  research experience resulting recommendations
• Candidates with both their GPA and GREs below
  average are almost never offered admission
• (GRE retake? If V Q below 1100, probably)
• Admissions committees only look at best scores

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The Admissions Process

• The factors used to rank you
• GPA, Transcript GRE
• Research experience Recommendations from these
  mentors are the most valuable.
• Ask your faculty about opportunities on campus.
• Apply to summer research opportunity (SROP)
  programs they pay you for participating!
• SROPs are incredibly competitive apply to many
  programs. (cbs.umn.edu/main/summer_research
  www.orbs.umn.edu/research)
• Usually Feb deadlines, so you need to begin
  preparing now.

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The Admissions Process

• The factors used to rank you
• GPA, Transcript GRE
• Research Experience
• Personal Statement
• Must be well written get others to read and
  edit
• Articulate what sparks your interest in research
• Describe strengths that you bring to the program
• Your statement should be specific for each school
  based on faculty interests and program
  requirements
• Positively address elements of your application
  that might be seen as weak or unusual

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The Admissions Process

• The factors used to rank you
• GPA, Transcript GRE
• Research Experience
• Personal Statement
• The Interview
• Be able to give a 5 minute summary of your best
  or most recent research project practice,
  practice, practice
• For each faculty member that you will meet, read
  and have 1-2 research questions on their latest
  publication(s). Potentially use those questions
  to ask the faculty member a question about their
  work.
• Use experience _at_ 1st interview for those that
  follow

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The Admissions Process

• The factors used to rank you
• GPA, Transcript GRE
• Research Experience
• Personal Statement
• The Interview
• Letters of Recommendation (3 required)
• Poor letters or poorly chosen recommenders can
  significantly hurt an application
• Obtaining strong letters of recommendation
  requires action on your part
• Too often a last minute consideration Dont let
  this happen to you

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The Admissions ProcessLetters of Recommendation

• Pitfalls to avoid
• Do not use list
• Family members
• Graduate students
• Spiritual mentors
• Use only in rare cases
• Postdocs
• Previous or current employers
• Faculty who know you solely from class work
• Last minute requests
• 6 week lead time for recommenders

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The Admissions ProcessLetters of Recommendation

• Be proactive for your recommendations
• Hard work in the lab or classroom enhances your
  skills and draws the attention of faculty
• Couple this with communication with the P.I. or
  instructor.
• Make performance evaluations part of your job
• Getting feedback while engaged in a project
  provides you a picture of what recommendation you
  might receive
• Be sensitive to cues from faculty to avoid being
  demanding
• Be assertive
• It is your future and it is always fair to ask a
  faculty member if they feel they can write you a
  strong letter
• Help your recommenders
• Ask them if they want any of the following
• Transcript, personal statement, recent history

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The Admissions ProcessLetters of Recommendation

• What is the most common problem I hear from
  students?
• I have only worked in two labs. What do I do for
  my third recommendation?
• A faculty member who has not seen you in the lab,
  but who has provided mentoring with regard to
  careers can contribute a strong letter for you.
• This requires that you have had one on one
  conversations about choosing career paths,
  strengths and weaknesses in your career
  development, etc.

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The Admissions Process

• Are changes in admissions policies coming?
• Undergraduate admissions are reevaluating the
  value of the SAT ACT in decisions. Some schools
  no longer use the SAT.
• Grade inflation, known issues with computerized
  testing and other issues pose problems for
  admissions committees.
• GPA and GRE data are entrenched because they are
  quantitative measures that can be used to
  evaluate the admissions over time.
• These measures have the best predictive validity
  for the core course grades of graduate students
  and much less for the quality of thesis research
  or future career end points.
• Graduate programs would like to use admissions
  criteria that are correlated with research and
  career outcomes.

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The ETS PPIPersonal Potential Index

• What is the PPI?
• (from the ETS web site)
• Show Graduate Programs a More Complete Picture
  of Your Potential for Success
• You know you are more than just the sum of your
  grades, test scores and recommendation letters.
  The new ETS Personal Potential Index (ETS PPI)
  gives you the opportunity to provide graduate and
  professional schools with more evidence about
  your capabilities. Submitting an ETS PPI
  Evaluation Report will show them that you are up
  to the challenge of graduate or professional
  school.

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The ETS PPI

• What does the PPI measure?
• (from the ETS web site)
• The ETS PPI provides reliable information on six
  personal dimensions that professional and
  graduate schools have indicated are critical for
  academic success
• Knowledge and Creativity
• Communication Skills
• Teamwork
• Resilience
• Planning and Organization
• Ethics and Integrity

• Background Information
• The PPI seeks to provide a quantitative measure
  of the information contained in letters of
  recommendation.
• ETS has the experience in measurement and test
  validation to give this serious consideration as
  a viable tool.
• In developing the PPI, ETS partnered with Project
  1000, lending their reputation to the value of
  this evaluation metric.

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The ETS PPI

• How does it work?
• (from the ETS web site)
• You select evaluators typically faculty
  members or supervisors to evaluate you on each
  of these dimensions by responding to 24
  statements and providing an overall rating.
  Evaluators can also include optional comments.
• The ETS PPI web-based evaluation system offers a
  simple and convenient process to collect and
  report essential information about your personal
  attributes to round out your graduate school
  application. Using the ETS PPI can help
  demonstrate your likelihood for success.

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The ETS PPI

• What are the 24 statements?
• Knowledge and Creativity
• Has a broad perspective on the field
• Is among the brightest persons I know
• Produces novel ideas
• Is intensely curious about the field
• Communication Skills
• Speaks in a clear, organized and logical manner
• Writes with precision and style
• Speaks in a way that is interesting
• Organizes writing well
• Teamwork
• Supports the efforts of others
• Behaves in an open and friendly manner
• Works well in group settings
• Gives criticism/feedback to others in a helpful
  way
• Resilience
• Accepts feedback without getting defensive
• Works well under stress

• What are the ratings?
• 1 Below Average
• 2 Average
• 3 Above Average
• 4 Outstanding (top 5)
• 5 Truly Exceptional (top 1)
• Insufficient opportunity to evaluate (these
  responses excluded from report)
• The evaluator rates the student on each of the 25
  statements on the left using this 5 point scale.
• A PPI Report states the cumulative average score
  for each of the 6 evaluation categories as well
  as the average for each evaluator. Evaluators can
  also add comments.
• The schools are told who the evaluators are and
  what their relationship with the student has
  been.

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The ETS PPI

• How do you use it?
• The student can ask up to 25 people to log on to
  the PPI evaluator web site and submit their
  scores for the student.
• A PPI report can be generated using any 5
  evaluators as selected by the student.
• That PPI report can then be sent to graduate
  programs in support of an application.
• Students cannot see the evaluators scores, nor
  the reports (which average the evaluator scores),
  but the students can create reports using
  different combinations of evaluators if they so
  choose.

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The ETS PPI

• Does it cost me anything?
• Anyone registering for the GRE on or after May 1,
  2009 qualifies for 4 free PPI reports.
• After 4, or for those registering prior to May 1,
  the cost is 20 to send a report to one school.
• Reports can be sent to schools that accept GRE
  test scores, but it is best to check with the
  school before placing the request to have a
  report sent.

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The ETS PPI

• How do admissions committees use it?
• No graduate programs that I am aware of uses the
  PPI. It is too new.
• The biomedical sciences graduate programs at the
  University of Minnesota are not interested in
  using the PPI.
• It has not yet been shown to provide unique
  information.
• Admissions committee members that I have talked
  with recommend students do not use this. They
  feel it has little chance of helping and a much
  greater chance of hurting a students
  application.
• A very similar rating scale system has been a
  part of the University of Minnesota Graduate
  School online application system for
  recommendations for several years.
• Those data are currently not used by the
  biomedical sciences graduate program admissions
  committees
• If the PPI were to gain broader use, the data
  available to all students for free in the current
  Graduate School application would be used by our
  graduate programs

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The ETS PPI

• Should you use the PPI?
• I do not advocate for or against your use of the
  PPI.
• I am providing information to you with so that
  you can determine whether the PPI can assist your
  goal of entering a Ph.D. program.
• I recommend you look at the ETS web site.
• I recommend you discuss this with mentors who are
  supporting you in the process of applying to
  graduate school.
• Graduate programs will make it clear if they
  adopt the PPI as part of their application on
  their web sites.

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The ETS PPI

• PPI impact on your application?
• Use the PPI questions and categories to improve
  your application and your interview performance.
• Perform a self evaluation on the questions from
  the PPI.
• Admissions committee faculty are interested in
  these same questions and you can expect to be
  asked to talk about or give examples that relate
  to these topics.
• Prepare yourself to concisely articulate in words
  and conversation your skill set.

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I want to answer your questions,so please
contact me

• Jon Gottesman, Ph.D. - Director
• Office of Recruiting for the Biomedical Sciences
  Graduate Programs
• University of Minnesota
• orbs_at_umn.edu
• www.orbs.umn.edu/big10expo

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Online Resources

• PPI www.ets.org (look under Products)
• Application Fee Grant Programs
• Project 1000 - mati.eas.asu.edu/p1000/
• CIC FreeAp - www.cic.net/Home/Students/FreeApp/Int
  roduction.aspx
• Summer Research for Undergraduates
• www.cbs.umn.edu/main/summer_research
• orbs.umn.edu/big10expo/
• www.grad.umn.edu/outreach/research/