Department of Environmental & Occupational Health, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX 77843.
Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX 77843.
CBE Life Sci Educ. 2022 Jun;21(2):ar19. doi: 10.1187/cbe.21-07-0189.
There is interest in admission criteria that predict future success in biomedical graduate school programs, but identifying predictors of PhD attainment is inherently complex. In particular, high noncompletion rates of PhD programs have long been recognized as a major crisis. Here, we present a quantitative analysis of the PhD students enrolled in the Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics at Texas A&M University between 1980 and 2010. The input variables included sex, country of citizenship, undergraduate grade point average (GPA), and Graduate Record Examination (GRE) scores (Verbal and Quantitative Reasoning). Only GPA was a significant predictor of PhD completion based on logistic regression. We also examined associations involving nonbinary measures of success (PhD duration, first author, and total number of publications) among students who completed a PhD. GPA was again associated with the PhD duration. No enrollment variable was strongly associated with publication output. Despite potential limitations, this analysis is the first to suggest an undergraduate GPA association with PhD completion in life sciences. These results from a large state university in a predominantly rural area expand the range of programs from which such analyses have been reported.
人们对能够预测未来在生物医学研究生院成功的入学标准很感兴趣，但确定博士学位的获得预测因素本质上很复杂。特别是，长期以来，博士项目的高非完成率一直被认为是一个主要危机。在这里，我们对 1980 年至 2010 年间在德克萨斯 A&M 大学生物化学和生物物理学系注册的博士研究生进行了定量分析。输入变量包括性别、公民身份的国家、本科平均绩点（GPA）和研究生入学考试（GRE）成绩（口头和定量推理）。只有 GPA 根据逻辑回归是博士完成的重要预测因素。我们还检查了在完成博士学位的学生中涉及非二进制成功衡量标准（博士持续时间、第一作者和出版物总数）的关联。GPA 再次与博士持续时间相关。没有任何入学变量与出版物输出有很强的关联。尽管存在潜在的局限性，但该分析首次表明本科 GPA 与生命科学博士完成有关。这些来自以农村为主的大型州立大学的结果扩展了进行此类分析的项目范围。
