Effectiveness of Holistic Admissions Efforts to Foster Diversity in a Doctor of Physical Therapy Program
Purpose: Healthcare access in the United States can be measured by indicators of access to health centers, preventable hospitalizations, and usual source of care. Each of these indicators is improved when healthcare practitioners resemble the cultural, racial, ethnic or linguistic characteristics of the persons they serve. The purpose of this study was to describe the holistic admissions factors utilized in a public Doctor of Physical Therapy (DPT) program and to assess the diversity of admitted students for whom a holistic review process was used over an 8-year period. Socioeconomic factors were examined in relation to admissions success and to race/ethnicity identities.
Methods/Description: Holistic admissions factors used at the XXXXX DPT program incorporated three types of weighted factors: Academic metrics (GPA and GRE scores), Socioeconomic Status (SES) Factors (economic, educational and environmental disadvantage) and Individual Skills and Attributes (interview scores, letters of recommendation, advanced course preparation, and second-language proficiency and fluency).
Results/Outcomes: Demographics of matriculated doctoral students for the 7 cohorts were: 57% female; 26% English as a Second Language (ESL); 31% first generation; 32% bilingual fluent; 26% economic disadvantage; 34% educational disadvantage, and 41% environmental disadvantage. Acceptance into the DPT program is significantly associated with all SES factors and second-language fluency, with economic disadvantage (p = .000), and environmental disadvantage (p = .003) showing the strongest association. For the most recent two cohorts, race/ethnicity identity of qualified applicants was not significantly associated with acceptance into the program (P = .095, n = 497). For those matriculated students claiming a race/ethnicity, when dichotomized into “White” only, and all others, 65.4% claimed “White” only, and 34.6% claimed a non-White or mixed race/ethnicity. An increase in the admissions weighting of SES and second-language abilities was made after the first 5 cohorts, and were associated with a 25% increase in the percentage of students not claiming “White” only race identity (32.9% to 41.1%), and a 26% increase in the percentage of male students (39% to 49%). While gender and second-language proficiency were not associated with race identity, tests of association showed significant association between those not claiming “White” only identification and bilingual fluency (P = .000), economic disadvantage (P = .000), educational disadvantage (P = .001), environmental disadvantage (P = .000), ESL (P = .000), and first generation (P = .000).
Conclusions/Relevance to the conference theme: Holistic review processes in DPT programs can be used to achieve more a diverse racial, socioeconomic and linguistic physical therapy student body, and therefore contribute to a more diverse workforce. This investigation is relevant to the conference theme of developing a diverse and culturally competent physical therapy workforce which can contribute towards a goal of equity in healthcare access.