The US and Canadian universities are discarding the GRE and PGRE (Physics GRE) exam in a great manner. James Guillochon, an astrophysicist in the Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics has stated that more than a dozen departments got away with the GRE exams. In fact, a 2019 statistical data has shown that most of the colleges in Guillochon’s list have abandoned the GRE exam, and by 2020 -21 it will not be considered crucial.

Alexander Rudolph, an astronomer at California State Polytechnic University has presented a distinctive viewpoint in light of the COVID-19 outbreak. He has stated “I think that this pandemic has exposed for people in a new way the levels of inequity throughout our society,” and has added how this outbreak has displayed the grotesque inequity that is present in the culture and society with relation to the graduate admissions.

Apart from the GRE fuss, COVID-19 concern coincides with the Black Lives Matter and the legal immigration by the Trump administration. Shockingly, Physics has always been a part of the analogous STEM fields having the least diversity with only 20% women being awarded PhDs and underrepresented minorities receiving only 5% in 2019.

Advocates stated that the GRE exam has never been highly functional in attracting applicants as it always ended up creating a less diversified pool. Ted Hoddap is the APS Director of Project Development and a former director of the APS Bridge program. They project towards empowering the underrepresented minorities by boosting their count of PhDs awarded. He has stated that “[We found] that the PGRE tends to be correlated with the grades in the first year of grad classes. But it's not a measure of your potential for success.”

ETS has already precisely mentioned in its guidelines that considering a minimum GRE score as the cutoff or a measure of disapproval is not suggested, but unfortunately, most universities do that. The Vice President of ETS, namely, David Payne has stated that the GRE exam should be maintained (especially during the outbreak) to ensure the universities are dealing with a diversified pool of applicants who are proficient in their skills.

Regrettably, the GRE exam can be only once in India which made Sanjana Sekhar who is a Ph.D. candidate at John Hopkins University drop her plan of applying because of postponing the retaking date to a year. The trouble doesn’t end here, the combined fees of GRE and PGRE are equal to the stipend of a Ph.D. candidate in India which makes it even more difficult for a person to pursue the exams.

Simply applying to a dozen schools will land the candidate paying out around $1,500. Test waivers too don’t play a commendable role here, as taking and sending the test scores alone costs hundreds of dollars.

It is in 2015 that the American Astronomical Society has made up the decision of abandoning the GRE exam, and the APS panel of Public Affairs with regard to this concern is on the making of a statement during this fall about the mechanism of the whole graduate admission process, and PGRE will also be a component in this discussion.

A striking phenomenon occurred in 2015 as stated by David Charbonneau (an astronomer at CfA) when GRE was lifted and the count of applicants boosted from 184 to 324 with the majority percentage hailing from underrepresented minorities and women from the US who are non-US citizens. Laura Lopez who is an astronomer at Ohio State University also witnessed the same flow across 27 astronomy programs. But all these preliminary results and therefore, the course of actual admission has not been delved into.

The concern is not just restricted to the GRE exam but other crucial exam requirements too. GPA, for instance, has been established to be a somewhat of an inessential predictor in the grad schools and letters of recommendations too perform a role in inciting biases against candidates hailing from Historically Black Colleges and Universities.

A theoretical physicist at the University of Illinois named Yoni Kahn has stated in regard to the GRE syllabus that how it is primarily attached to the grad school content but few strategically solving methods like dimensional analysis, limiting cases and order-of-magnitude estimates are crucial for the candidates. Kahn has also added that “It would be worth having a community-wide discussion on the intended purpose of the GRE in admissions decisions, and how the exam and the admissions process more generally could be restructured to emphasize these useful elements while minimizing the standardized-test baggage,”

When asked the respective students on the ways of betterment, Sekhar shared how a statement of purpose (SOP) whose spotlights are the research works would be beneficial for the Ph.D. candidates. Iskander, a first-generation student added how a peer mentorship will prove favorable in his case.