How to recruit quality graduate students in the modern age
Lately the graduate students coming into the department are drastically lower in quality than even five years ago. I realize this is a symptom of the larger issues we’ve seen in undergraduate classes (COVID, AI, US education system). However these graduate students coming into our department interview well, come with good letters of recommendation, and fantastic CVs. However, when they start it quickly becomes apparent their qualifications are exaggerated or straight up lies. They struggle with very basic tasks and in many cases take any criticism as a personal attack. The causes of these things aside I am struggling to come up with a reliable method to tease out quality students from those that can lie well or use AI help during the application phase. I have thought about extended interview periods, having them zoom in to lab meeting, contributing to paper discussions, inviting them for additional visits outside department recruitment events to observe them in lab/field. However, this feels excessive (maybe I’m wrong) and potentially unfair to the prospectives. So I am turning to you for advice. How have you all adjusted your recruitment techniques? Thanks