Results from a two year study of graduate admissions during the COVID-19 pandemic

Since 2020, the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted global society in many ways causing substantial harm and suffering to millions. Academia has been disturbed in myriad ways including threatening established efforts to improve diversity in higher education. This talk will report on a study conducted during 2020-2022 on the disruptions to, adaptations around, and prospects for graduate admissions and induction in physics departments in the U.S. Drawing on multiple sources of data gathered from Directors of Graduate Study and new graduate students, we present the evolving challenges that students and physics departments faced in this period. From the perspective of new graduate students, we observe substantial variability in the opportunities students had to maintain their own safety, balance demands of family and other non-academic considerations, the treatment they received as the pandemic impacted "business as usual", and their prospects for future study and employment. From a departmental perspective, we identify program resilience - a characteristic of programs which had previously developed intentional recruiting/admissions processes that incorporated students' challenges and interests - as a distinguishing factor for departments that felt better able to withstand COVID-related disruptions.