Recruitment and admissions experience

In this video, Bukola Oyinloye and Paul Wakeling from YCEDE discuss the use of rubrics and holistic review in doctoral selection and admission. The use of assessment rubrics and criteria for selection which try to assess an applicant’s wider set of PhD-relevant skills is one means to support fairer and more equitable doctoral recruitment.

This paper was developed by the Accomplished Study Programme in Research Excellence (ASPIRE), one of the 13 Research England-funded projects focused on racial equity and widening access to postgraduate study.

Paul Wakeling and Bukola Oyinloye present work led by Lucy Atkinson on identifying and describing existing recruitment and selection equity initiatives within YCEDE universities — with a particular focus on DTP/CDT activities.

The report was created by ASPIRE and details the process and impact evaluation of the ASPIRE programme over its second year and second cohort of scholars, supervisors, and mentors. Cohort 2 ran from February to June 2023 with 16 scholars, 15 mentors and 14 supervisors.

This blog post has been written by Tyra Amofah-Akardom and Dami Folayan, both students in the Faculty of Education at the University of Cambridge.