Standard
8: Student Admissions (Graduate
Education)
The institution
seeks to admit students whose interests, goals, and abilities are congruent with
its mission and seeks to retain them through the pursuit of the students’
educational goals.
An accredited
institution is expected to possess or demonstrate the following attributes or
activities:
This element for undergraduate
education is covered in the self-study.
For Graduate Education:
Each of
5. statements of
expected student learning outcomes and information on institution-wide
assessment results, as appropriate to the program offered, available to prospective
students;
6. accurate and
comprehensive information, and advice where appropriate, regarding financial
aid, scholarships, grants, loans, and refunds;
7. published and
implemented policies and procedures regarding transfer credit and credit for
extra-institutional college level learning; and
These elements for
undergraduate education are covered in the self-study.
For Graduate Education:
Information about admissions policies, academic programs and expectations, financial aid programs, and policies and procedures regarding transfer credit in the graduate and professional units of the university is obtained by various constituencies including prospective and enrolled students from a variety of sources. These include
·
Student
Catalogs – each graduate and professional unit publishes a catalog that
is easily assessable via the web
·
An online central clearinghouse on graduate admissions –
this site allows prospective students to apply online and provides descriptions
and links to additional information on all graduate and professional programs
offered at
·
Websites of individual schools
offering graduate and professional programs – each graduate and
professional school has an online website that provides an assortment of
information about the academic unit, its faculty, opportunities and
expectations of students enrolled in its programs, admissions requirements and
procedures, and financial aid opportunities.
3. programs and
services to ensure that admitted students who marginally meet or do not meet the
institution’s qualifications achieve expected learning goals and higher
education outcomes at appropriate points;
This element for undergraduate
education is covered in the self-study.
For Graduate Education:
Does Not Apply
4. accurate and
comprehensive information regarding academic programs, including any required
placement or diagnostic testing;
This element for undergraduate
education is covered in the self-study.
For Graduate Education, the
online catalogs provide the necessary information for admissions and academic
programs including general requirements, necessary testing, specific requirements
for international students, as well as detailed information on programs, faculty
and courses.
8. ongoing assessment
of student success, including but not necessarily limited to retention, that
evaluates the match between the attributes of admitted students and the
institution’s mission and programs, and reflects its findings in its
admissions, remediation, and other related policies.
This element for undergraduate
education is covered in the self-study.
For Graduate Education:
Individual schools regularly assess the success of their students. For many schools, and especially the professional schools, these assessments often follow the requirements of their professional accrediting bodies. For additional information, see the list of schools that are accredited by professional accrediting organizations.
As it has been doing in the area of undergraduate education, the Association of American Universities (AAU) has been working with its individual member institutions to develop benchmarks that can be used to assess and to improve educational outcomes, including retention and time-to-degree, at the graduate program level (see standard 7, element 1).
The Graduate School-New Brunswick has been an active participant with a number of other AAU institutions in the development of a database to assess programs, including comparative measures of student success. (see an example of data contained in this database.) The school has also been administering a Ph.D. exit survey to all students receiving their doctorate. The results of this survey have provided individual programs with valuable feedback information about their programs. (see an example of a program survey report.)
Rutgers Graduate Schools are also active participants in national data collection efforts such as the Survey of Graduate Enrollment by the Council of Graduate Schools and the Graduate Record Examination Board and the soon-to-be-released National Research Council’s assessment of U.S. research doctorate programs (see an analysis of the last assessment by NRC of Rutgers’ doctoral programs.)