Admissions Protocols: Diverse Students

Communicating with potential graduate students after they have inquired about your department significantly impacts their application and subsequent enrollment decisions. Timely and continuous communication across multiple mediums is vital. A typical communication schedule can look like this:

• First contact: A letter or email from a DOGE and/or professor should be sent following a student’s initial inquiry.
• Follow-up: If no response was generated from the initial contact, another letter or email from the department should be sent. Current graduate students and/or alumni should also occur during this follow-up process.
• Admission is offered: Following admission, students should receive communication from the DOGE, professors, students, and/or alumni to encourage them to enroll.

Employ a holistic review of applicants, not just the quantitative factors.

• Consider life experiences and resilience as positive indicators of success in graduate studies
• Be aware of your own unconscious bias(es) when reviewing application and reading letters of recommendation

Be proactive and regularly assess your department’s and your individual recruitment practices by gathering and tracking the following:

• Number of inquiries made by prospective students
• Source of the inquiry, i.e. website, email, interest cards
• Number of applicants
• Number of accepted students
• Frequency and type of correspondence to accepted students
• Enrollment yield

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