Rubric-based holistic review represents a change from traditional graduate admissions approaches in physics

Rubric-based admissions are claimed to help make the graduate process more equitable, possibly helping address historical and ongoing inequities in U.S. physics school that have often excluded applicants from minoritized races, ethnicities, genders, backgrounds. Yet, no studies examined whether rubric-based methods represent a fundamental change of or simply new tool achieves same outcome. To that, we developed supervised machine learning models data collected our department over seven-year period. During first four years, used traditional switched for following three allowing us compare which parts applications were drive decisions. We find faculty focused on applicants' GRE scores grade point averages when making decisions before implementation rubric. While able develop sufficiently good model whose results could trust rubric, unable do so after despite multiple modifications algorithms such as implementing Tomek Links. Our inability second set being combined with comparison analyses suggests does underlying process. These suggest holistic review is method equitable.