Identifying emerging scholars: seeing through the crystal ball of scholarship selection committees

Abstract

To better understand the added-value of the academic evaluation process, this paper studies the relationship between scores given by 105 evaluators to 1900 doctoral candidates who received a scholarship and their outcomes 10 years after the competition. I first find that a one point increase in total score is associated with a 1.4 percentage point (2.1% of a s.e.) increase in the probability of completing a Ph.D. in 5 years, with a 1.0 percentage point (2.1% of a s.e.) increase in the probability of completing a Ph.D. in 10 years, and with a 1.4 percentage point increase (3% of a s.e.) in the probability of becoming a tenure-track professor 10 years after the competition. I then use the individual evaluator-candidate scores to provide evidence that male evaluators give higher scores than do female evaluators to students who complete their doctoral program in 5 years. Since there is no difference between scores given by male and female evaluators to candidates who become tenure-track professors, male evaluators seem more focused on shorter time to degree than are female evaluators.