Survey ran by Bárbara Cruvinel Santiago and co-authored by Tuan Nguyen on the academic and mental health effects of qualifying exams that were used up to 2020 on the Columbia Physics Department graduate student body. The report uses data from the Spring of 2020.
The report found out that women were disproportionately affected by our quals in terms of mental health and hesitated to accept our offer at a rate 20x higher than men. Almost half of the students reported struggling with mental health issues because of the exams. Unfortunately, due to the department demographics, we did not have enough data on racial minorities to do a comprehensive analysis without identifying students. Moreover, from our research, Columbia seemed to have one of the most grueling physics qualifying exams until 2020, and students in the program were heavily in favor of exam reform, which finally happened before the 2021 exams was supposed to take place, after decades of nearly no change.