Rebecca Zwick is an American statistician and researcher in

educational assessment Educational assessment or educational evaluation is the systematic process of documenting and using empirical data on the knowledge, skill, attitudes, aptitude and beliefs to refine programs and improve student learning. Assessment data can be o ...

and

psychometrics Psychometrics is a field of study within psychology concerned with the theory and technique of measurement. Psychometrics generally refers to specialized fields within psychology and education devoted to testing, measurement, assessment, and ...

. She is a

professor emeritus ''Emeritus'' (; female: ''emerita'') is an adjective used to designate a retired chair, professor, pastor, bishop, pope, director, president, prime minister, rabbi, emperor, or other person who has been "permitted to retain as an honorary title ...

in the

Gevirtz Graduate School of Education The Gevirtz Graduate School of Education is a graduate school at the University of California, Santa Barbara which specializes in the field of education and counseling, clinical and school psychology. It is located in technology-enabled Education ...

at the

University of California, Santa Barbara The University of California, Santa Barbara (UC Santa Barbara or UCSB) is a Public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Santa Barbara County, California, Santa Barbara, California with 23,196 undergraduate ...

and the author of a book on

university and college admission University admission or college admission is the process through which students enter tertiary education at universities and colleges. Systems vary widely from country to country, and sometimes from institution to institution. In many countries ...

, ''Who Gets In? Strategies for Fair and Effective College Admissions'' (Harvard University Press, 2017).

Education and career

Zwick earned a master's degree in statistics from

Rutgers University Rutgers University (; RU), officially Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, is a Public university, public land-grant research university consisting of four campuses in New Jersey. Chartered in 1766, Rutgers was originally called Queen's ...

, and completed a Ph.D. in quantitative methods in education from the

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant u ...

. After postdoctoral studies at the

University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill A university () is an institution of higher (or tertiary) education and research which awards academic degrees in several academic disciplines. Universities typically offer both undergraduate and postgraduate programs. In the United States ...

and twelve years with the

Educational Testing Service Educational Testing Service (ETS), founded in 1947, is the world's largest private nonprofit educational testing and assessment organization. It is headquartered in Lawrence Township, New Jersey, but has a Princeton address. ETS develops var ...

, she joined the UC Santa Barbara faculty in 1996. She retired in 2010, and returned to the Educational Testing Service as a Distinguished Presidential Appointee.

Book

Zwick is in favor of the use of affirmative action to balance the gender and racial composition of colleges, and her book ''Who Gets In?'' shows that the use of standardized test scores in college admissions can have a similar effect: according to her book, simulated admission results based only on grades, without the use of standardized test scores, would admit many more women than men, and admit a larger number of Asian-American students in preference to students from other minorities. As her book describes, the use of standardized tests tends to counter these effects.

Recognition

In 2012, Zwick was elected as a

Fellow of the American Statistical Association Like many other academic professional societies, the American Statistical Association (ASA) uses the title of Fellow of the American Statistical Association as its highest honorary grade of membership. The number of new fellows per year is limited ...

References

External links

Home page
{{DEFAULTSORT:Zwick, Rebecca Year of birth missing (living people) Living people American statisticians Women statisticians Rutgers University alumni UC Berkeley Graduate School of Education alumni University of California, Santa Barbara faculty Fellows of the American Statistical Association