Iowa Accidentally Reveals Applicant Info

[aaascootboy101]

I found this information in a document released by the Provost at the University of Iowa. It is the report of a strategic task force to determine which graduate departments should be cut. Those in the natural sciences need not worry, the programs on the chopping block are mostly in the humanities. I did however find some information which should be of interest to biology students:

http://provost.uiowa.edu/work/strategic-initiatives/docs/tfreports/SITF_GraduatePlusAppendices.pdf

I won't ruin the surprise, but go to page 206 and be prepared to be shocked. My apologies to those affected, I have never seen a mishandling of data like this in Graduate admissions before!

[JustChill]

I dont see page 206.

[ebaronov]

The pages are not numbered. You have to manually go to page 206 in Acrobat reader/Preview/FoxIt or whatever pdf reader you're using.

By the way this is one more proof that they do not look at your AW score

[aaascootboy101]

Ebaranov is correct, I meant page 206 of the PDF. Shocking, isn't it?

[cogneuroforfun]

Wow, that's intense. I think even the individual placement information is pretty shady, that they should instead have done "Of graduates in the last 15 years, X are postdocs, X are professors, etc," not the information for each individual with their name! But listing the incoming students' stats by name is just unbelievable.

[Postbib Yeshuist]

Holy cow. I e-mailed them to see what their response was. The inclusion of GPA really strikes me as a big breach of FERPA.

Edited March 8, 2010 by Postbib Yeshuist

[NeuroNerd86]

wow, that does seem like something outrageously illegal, unless they have consent of all those students which is HIGHLY unlikely

[UnlikelyGrad]

I think they pulled the info. At the beginning of the section, it says such data are available in Appendix II. On the copy I pulled up, it goes straight from Appendix I to Appendix III.

[aaascootboy101]

Well, that was fast! Going back to look at the file again, it does appear that 30 pages or so have suspiciously disappeared. For those of you that missed it, I can explain what was there. It was a list of all of those who matriculated in the biology program at the University of Iowa from 2000 - 2009 complete with: first and last name; GRE Verbal, Quantitative, and Writing Scores; and Undergraduate GPA. Appalling stuff, to say the least.

The rest of the document is an interesting read as well, basically departments defending their programs so they won't get cut. The list of programs which 'need to be evaluated further' skews heavily toward the humanities. Looking at the departments of those on the committee which made this decision, you can see that none of their departments made the 'need to be evaluated' list. Also, the university announced that no program on the list would receive university fellowship funds. No funds means less of a chance at an incoming class. I think they are trying to smoke these programs out. It all seems very fishy to me!

[captiv8ed]

It's interesting, I was speaking to the Graduate Director for Sociology a few weeks back and was asking her placement rating and so forth and she said, "I have that info. I JUST got done crunching all those numbers for a big report." And this is obviously the report.