Diversity in graduate programs doesn’t just happen, and it certainly can’t be achieved in one admissions cycle with a few quick fixes to your recruitment efforts and admissions policies.
It requires a conscious effort to build a strong base of undergraduate students from underrepresented communities, often from backgrounds that are different from the faculty members who are doing the recruiting and admissions decision making. While there are larger systemic challenges at play, there are several practices that schools can implement to reach a more diverse and inclusive graduate class.
Underlying all of your efforts should be a sensitivity to the obstacles that students from underserved backgrounds face when it comes to education. Those students may have had limited exposure to what graduate education is all about or may not associate it as an opportunity available to them if they didn’t have role models who attended graduate school. Programs should ask themselves if the applicants they are trying to recruit can see themselves in the stories they are telling. Authenticity is key here, such as showing a photo of the NAACP chapter on campus, or the Latino Biology Club, rather than a photo that includes one person from each ethnic group, who wouldn’t actually be part of a group together.
Along the same lines, programs are likely to be more successful if they consider the representation among recruitment teams, faculty, featured alumni, student ambassadors and anyone else they send into the community to vouch for the program. If a student from an underserved background has never considered graduate school as an option, they are not likely to start if they don’t see themselves reflected in the recruitment process. 
Dr. Michael Cunningham
Programs can strengthen the pipeline by tapping into existing networks of academic societies and organizations that serve and represent the students they are seeking — professional societies, minority-serving organizations, or historically Black colleges and universities. Conversations with their membership about the benefits of continuing their education and resources to help them prepare for grad school can help demystify and reduce anxiety around the unknown. This is an opportunity to inspire an engaged audience to envision their future and believe that they are capable of grad school and career success.
As the cost of a graduate degree is a source of concern, programs that make an effort to guide prospects through the financial process and highlight any scholarships, stipends, grants or other assistance will surely come out ahead. Some programs pay for strong prospective applicants to visit campus, where applicants can even more clearly envision their future at the school and meet faculty and students with similar backgrounds and/or interests. Others, like UMBC, offer a four-year merit award. Here at Tulane University, we’ve incorporated several practices to reduce some of the financial burden facing prospective graduate students — the School of Science and Engineering does not charge an application fee for its graduate programs; the School of Liberal Arts has increased the Ph.D. stipend for all of its programs; and the School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine has developed a scholarship partnership with a historically Black fraternity.
