Brown now has 24 Ph.D. programs that do not require the GRE.
Brown University dropped the GRE requirement for 24 of its Ph.D. programs. The decision is effective immediately, which will be welcome news for many prospective 2020 matriculants. It’s also a move that is eerily similar to the one just made by Princeton. Furthermore and not surprisingly, Brown gave the same reasons for its decision to drop the standardized test requirement. Graduate school dean Andrew G. Campbell explained, “The future success of graduate education at Brown depends on the diverse, innovative and intellectually independent candidates we admit and the varied skill sets they bring to their disciplines. By removing the Graduate School’s GRE requirement and allowing programs to decide whether to require the exam, we will broaden the talent pool of students who apply to and have access to graduate education at Brown.”
Anita Zimmerman, the graduate program director for Brown’s molecular pharmacology and physiology program, added that her program had already been placing less emphasis on the GRE in recent years. Instead, the molecular pharmacology and physiology program had begun placing additional influence on letters of reference, personal statements and interviews.
Just to be crystal clear, Brown has 51 Ph.D. programs. So just over half still require the GRE. The following are the ones that dropped the requirement:
- American Studies
- Biotechnology
- Biomedical Engineering
- Chemistry
- Comparative Literature
- Computational Biology
- Computer Science
- Earth, Environmental and Planetary Sciences
- Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
- English
- French Studies
- German Studies
- Hispanic Studies
- Italian Studies
- Mathematics
- Modern Culture and Media
- Molecular Biology, Cell Biology and Biochemistry
- Molecular Pharmacology and Physiology
- Neuroscience
- Pathobiology
- Portuguese and Brazilian Studies
- Religious Studies
- Slavic Studies
- Theatre and Performance Studies
