Dear admission committee…: Which moves in application essays predict student master grades?

Timon de Boer; Frank Van Rijnsoever; Hans de Bresser

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0304394

Peer Review History

Original SubmissionMarch 28, 2023
7 Aug 2023 Decision Letter - Yasir Ahmad, Editor PONE-D-23-08316 Dear admission committee… How the topics in application essays predict student master grades PLOS ONE Dear Dr. de Boer, Thank you for submitting your manuscript to PLOS ONE. After careful consideration, we feel that it has merit but does not fully meet PLOS ONE’s publication criteria as it currently stands. Therefore, we invite you to submit a revised version of the manuscript that addresses the points raised during the review process. You should give special emphasis on the references as more recent research should be given emphasis. Methods need to be written in more detailed as which Masters' programs were included and why? Format of the tables need to be improved. Please submit your revised manuscript by Sep 21 2023 11:59PM. If you will need more time than this to complete your revisions, please reply to this message or contact the journal office at plosone@plos.org. When you're ready to submit your revision, log on to https://www.editorialmanager.com/pone/ and select the 'Submissions Needing Revision' folder to locate your manuscript file. Please include the following items when submitting your revised manuscript: A rebuttal letter that responds to each point raised by the academic editor and reviewer(s). You should upload this letter as a separate file labeled 'Response to Reviewers'. A marked-up copy of your manuscript that highlights changes made to the original version. You should upload this as a separate file labeled 'Revised Manuscript with Track Changes'. An unmarked version of your revised paper without tracked changes. You should upload this as a separate file labeled 'Manuscript'. If you would like to make changes to your financial disclosure, please include your updated statement in your cover letter. Guidelines for resubmitting your figure files are available below the reviewer comments at the end of this letter. If applicable, we recommend that you deposit your laboratory protocols in protocols.io to enhance the reproducibility of your results. Protocols.io assigns your protocol its own identifier (DOI) so that it can be cited independently in the future. For instructions see: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/submission-guidelines#loc-laboratory-protocols. Additionally, PLOS ONE offers an option for publishing peer-reviewed Lab Protocol articles, which describe protocols hosted on protocols.io. Read more information on sharing protocols at https://plos.org/protocols?utm_medium=editorial-email&utm_source=authorletters&utm_campaign=protocols. We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript. Kind regards, Yasir Ahmad Academic Editor PLOS ONE Journal Requirements: When submitting your revision, we need you to address these additional requirements. 1. Please ensure that your manuscript meets PLOS ONE's style requirements, including those for file naming. The PLOS ONE style templates can be found at https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/file?id=wjVg/PLOSOne_formatting_sample_main_body.pdf and https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/file?id=ba62/PLOSOne_formatting_sample_title_authors_affiliations.pdf 2. In your Data Availability statement, you have not specified where the minimal data set underlying the results described in your manuscript can be found. PLOS defines a study's minimal data set as the underlying data used to reach the conclusions drawn in the manuscript and any additional data required to replicate the reported study findings in their entirety. All PLOS journals require that the minimal data set be made fully available. For more information about our data policy, please see http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/data-availability. 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We will update your Data Availability statement to reflect the information you provide in your cover letter. 3. Please include captions for your Supporting Information files at the end of your manuscript, and update any in-text citations to match accordingly. Please see our Supporting Information guidelines for more information: http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/supporting-information. 4. Please review your reference list to ensure that it is complete and correct. If you have cited papers that have been retracted, please include the rationale for doing so in the manuscript text, or remove these references and replace them with relevant current references. Any changes to the reference list should be mentioned in the rebuttal letter that accompanies your revised manuscript. If you need to cite a retracted article, indicate the article’s retracted status in the References list and also include a citation and full reference for the retraction notice. [Note: HTML markup is below. Please do not edit.] Reviewers' comments: Reviewer's Responses to Questions Comments to the Author 1. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions? The manuscript must describe a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusions. Experiments must have been conducted rigorously, with appropriate controls, replication, and sample sizes. The conclusions must be drawn appropriately based on the data presented. Reviewer #1: Yes Reviewer #2: Yes ******** 2. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously? Reviewer #1: Yes Reviewer #2: Yes ****** 3. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available? The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception (please refer to the Data Availability Statement in the manuscript PDF file). The data should be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information, or deposited to a public repository. For example, in addition to summary statistics, the data points behind means, medians and variance measures should be available. If there are restrictions on publicly sharing data—e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified. Reviewer #1: No Reviewer #2: Yes ****** 4. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English? PLOS ONE does not copyedit accepted manuscripts, so the language in submitted articles must be clear, correct, and unambiguous. Any typographical or grammatical errors should be corrected at revision, so please note any specific errors here. Reviewer #1: No Reviewer #2: Yes ****** 5. Review Comments to the Author Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters) Reviewer #1: I recognised the efforts of the authors despite the limitations of studies of this nature. Below are my obsevations and suggestions: 1.Looking at the content, including the analysis and conclusions of the study, I suggest the re-consideration of the study’s title or using the word "what are" in place of "how" in the study title since the study deployed quantitative analysis techniques to look at the topics in application essays and their correlations and prediction of student success. ( Additional reference to Line 558; the study’s aim) 2.Please consider reading the manuscript for some perceived minor grammatical mistakes. Example: The use of the word "motivate" in line 400 seems not to be appropriate. 3.I suggest syntax interruptions be minimised throughout the paper for easy comprehension. For instance, the sentence "Furthermore, every international background, except "international background: Africa," has a more significant positive relationship compared with our reference category, Europe. (Line 437)" could be transformed into "Furthermore, every international background has a more significant positive relationship compared with our reference category, Europe, except "Africa." 4. Students with a relatively low bachelor’s grade and unsuitable bachelor’s degree “would probably write little about their intrinsic motivation”. (Line 616-627) Any literature to back this strong claim? 5.For transparency purposes, any analysis carried and discussed or mentioned in the paper should be made available for readers (as a supporting document). example: "We controlled for these disciplines with our education programme."dummies, and found they do not significantly influence our main findings. " 6.We are told continents were used because the sample size was small for some regional and sub-regional groups. It is appropriate for us to know the total number of participants from each continent and whether all were adequate for the analysis carried. I suggest a table for the characteristics of the participants used, including sex, continent, age, type of master’s programme, and others available. Such information might be relevant for making appropriate inferences from the study, e.g., the deviations of African students from some of the study findings. 7. I doubt if the tables meet the PlosOne specifications. Reviewer #2: The manuscript section is well written and presented. Commendable presentation of result Good presentation of the discussion. ****** 6. PLOS authors have the option to publish the peer review history of their article (what does this mean?). If published, this will include your full peer review and any attached files. If you choose “no”, your identity will remain anonymous but your review may still be made public. Do you want your identity to be public for this peer review? For information about this choice, including consent withdrawal, please see our Privacy Policy. Reviewer #1: No Reviewer #2: No ******** [NOTE: If reviewer comments were submitted as an attachment file, they will be attached to this email and accessible via the submission site. Please log into your account, locate the manuscript record, and check for the action link "View Attachments". If this link does not appear, there are no attachment files.] While revising your submission, please upload your figure files to the Preflight Analysis and Conversion Engine (PACE) digital diagnostic tool, https://pacev2.apexcovantage.com/. PACE helps ensure that figures meet PLOS requirements. To use PACE, you must first register as a user. Registration is free. Then, login and navigate to the UPLOAD tab, where you will find detailed instructions on how to use the tool. If you encounter any issues or have any questions when using PACE, please email PLOS at figures@plos.org. Please note that Supporting Information files do not need this step. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0304394.r003
Revision 1
23 Nov 2023 Author Response Dear editor, dear reviewers, We are grateful for the positive reception of the paper by both reviewers and the editors. Please find below how we addressed each comment. Comments from Editor You should give special emphasis on the references as more recent research should be given emphasis. We put extra emphasis on the more recent references by changing the order of certain sentences in the introduction. Furthermore, we expanded our description of the most relevant quantitative and recent papers which our paper builds on. We hope this satisfies the editors expectations. Methods need to be written in more detailed as which Masters' programs were included and why? We have now added a description of the faculty, a the motivation for the programs that we included, and the names of the programs. Format of the tables need to be improved. We updated to formatting of the tables to comply with the journals guidelines. Comments from Reviewer 1: 1.Looking at the content, including the analysis and conclusions of the study, I suggest the re-consideration of the study’s title or using the word "what are" in place of "how" in the study title since the study deployed quantitative analysis techniques to look at the topics in application essays and their correlations and prediction of student success. ( Additional reference to Line 558; the study’s aim) We agree with reviewer that how is not the best word in the title. Hence, we went for: “Dear admission committee…: Which moves in application essays predict student master grades?” We also opted to use the word ‘moves’ instead of ‘topics’ in the title, since this better reflects the contents of the paper 2.Please consider reading the manuscript for some perceived minor grammatical mistakes. Example: The use of the word "motivate" in line 400 seems not to be appropriate. (actie Frank) We understand how this can lead to confusion. We changed the sentence to: “After all, students write about master specific term to motivate how passionate they are for content of the master.” Further, we read through the manuscript and made several other minor adjustments, and spelling corrections (see manuscript.) 3.I suggest syntax interruptions be minimised throughout the paper for easy comprehension. For instance, the sentence "Furthermore, every international background, except "international background: Africa," has a more significant positive relationship compared with our reference category, Europe. (Line 437)" could be transformed into "Furthermore, every international background has a more significant positive relationship compared with our reference category, Europe, except "Africa." We followed this suggestion, and changed this on all occasions. 4. Students with a relatively low bachelor’s grade and unsuitable bachelor’s degree “would probably write little about their intrinsic motivation”. (Line 616-627) Any literature to back this strong claim? This is a very specific claim that was not found in the scarce literature on motivation letters. In the end, we decided to let the data speak. We compared the data that we have about rejected students (which we could not include in our analysis, because we have no master grades for this group). Based on this, we found no indications for admission bias: “However, our data for rejected students shows that there is hardly any correlation between the probability to use any of the relevant moves in the application essay, and the average bachelor grade (Pearsons r = -0.06, n=348), and the suitability of the bachelor program (Pearsons r = -0.08, n=375). These correlations hardly differ from those of admitted students (average bachelor grade: Pearson’s r = -0.04, n=1582 and suitability Pearsons r = -0.02, n=2755). In a univariate binary logistic regression, we did find a positive significant relationship between the probability of using relevant moves and being admitted or not (odds ratio=48.99). This result is theoretically expected as the use of the relevant moves is expected to contribute to study success. Based on these results, we see little indication of admission bias.” 5.For transparency purposes, any analysis carried and discussed or mentioned in the paper should be made available for readers (as a supporting document). example: "We controlled for these disciplines with our education programme."dummies, and found they do not significantly influence our main findings. "(actie Timon) This is very good point by the reviewer. We followed this suggestion and made this analyses available in a supporting document. We did this for both the betaregressions and the OLS. 6.We are told continents were used because the sample size was small for some regional and sub-regional groups. It is appropriate for us to know the total number of participants from each continent and whether all were adequate for the analysis carried. I suggest a table for the characteristics of the participants used, including sex, continent, age, type of master’s programme, and others available. Such information might be relevant for making appropriate inferences from the study, e.g., the deviations of African students from some of the study findings. We included a table with means and standard deviations for the numerical variables, and distributions and standard deviations for the categorical variables as well as a correlation matrix for all numeric variables in the methodology. 7. I doubt if the tables meet the PlosOne specifications. We updated to formatting of the tables to comply with the journals guidelines. Attachments Attachment Submitted filename: Response to Reviewers.docx https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0304394.r001
2 Jan 2024 Decision Letter - Yasir Ahmad, Editor PONE-D-23-08316R1Dear admission committee…: Which moves in application essays predict student master grades?PLOS ONE Dear Dr. de Boer, Thank you for submitting your revised manuscript to PLOS ONE. After careful consideration, we feel that it has merit but does not fully meet PLOS ONE’s publication criteria as it currently stands. Therefore, we invite you to submit a revised version of the manuscript that addresses the points raised during the review process. Please submit your revised manuscript by Feb 16 2024 11:59PM. If you will need more time than this to complete your revisions, please reply to this message or contact the journal office at plosone@plos.org. When you're ready to submit your revision, log on to https://www.editorialmanager.com/pone/ and select the 'Submissions Needing Revision' folder to locate your manuscript file. Please include the following items when submitting your revised manuscript: A rebuttal letter that responds to each point raised by the academic editor and reviewer(s). You should upload this letter as a separate file labeled 'Response to Reviewers'. A marked-up copy of your manuscript that highlights changes made to the original version. You should upload this as a separate file labeled 'Revised Manuscript with Track Changes'. An unmarked version of your revised paper without tracked changes. You should upload this as a separate file labeled 'Manuscript'. If you would like to make changes to your financial disclosure, please include your updated statement in your cover letter. Guidelines for resubmitting your figure files are available below the reviewer comments at the end of this letter. If applicable, we recommend that you deposit your laboratory protocols in protocols.io to enhance the reproducibility of your results. Protocols.io assigns your protocol its own identifier (DOI) so that it can be cited independently in the future. For instructions see: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/submission-guidelines#loc-laboratory-protocols. Additionally, PLOS ONE offers an option for publishing peer-reviewed Lab Protocol articles, which describe protocols hosted on protocols.io. Read more information on sharing protocols at https://plos.org/protocols?utm_medium=editorial-email&utm_source=authorletters&utm_campaign=protocols. We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript. Kind regards, Yasir Ahmad Academic Editor PLOS ONE Journal Requirements: Please review your reference list to ensure that it is complete and correct. If you have cited papers that have been retracted, please include the rationale for doing so in the manuscript text, or remove these references and replace them with relevant current references. Any changes to the reference list should be mentioned in the rebuttal letter that accompanies your revised manuscript. If you need to cite a retracted article, indicate the article’s retracted status in the References list and also include a citation and full reference for the retraction notice. Additional Editor Comments: There are minor issues which if addressed will certainly improve the article and make it more suitable for the larger audience. We appreciate the work you have put in for preparation of this manuscript. [Note: HTML markup is below. Please do not edit.] Reviewers' comments: Reviewer's Responses to Questions Comments to the Author 1. If the authors have adequately addressed your comments raised in a previous round of review and you feel that this manuscript is now acceptable for publication, you may indicate that here to bypass the “Comments to the Author” section, enter your conflict of interest statement in the “Confidential to Editor” section, and submit your "Accept" recommendation. Reviewer #1: (No Response) ******** 2. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions? The manuscript must describe a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusions. Experiments must have been conducted rigorously, with appropriate controls, replication, and sample sizes. The conclusions must be drawn appropriately based on the data presented. Reviewer #1: Yes ****** 3. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously? Reviewer #1: Yes ****** 4. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available? The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception (please refer to the Data Availability Statement in the manuscript PDF file). The data should be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information, or deposited to a public repository. For example, in addition to summary statistics, the data points behind means, medians and variance measures should be available. If there are restrictions on publicly sharing data—e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified. Reviewer: No ****** 5. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English? PLOS ONE does not copyedit accepted manuscripts, so the language in submitted articles must be clear, correct, and unambiguous. Any typographical or grammatical errors should be corrected at revision, so please note any specific errors here. Reviewer: No ****** 6. Review Comments to the Author Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters) Reviewer #1: While the work has improved, these are what were observed and recommended. 1.It is recommended that authors explicitly state the study design under Section 3 (Methods). 2.Considering gender as binary is becoming outdated and unacceptable. Gender, as a social construct, is not binary (male or female). Perhaps sex, a biological construct often measured as binary, could be used in place of gender in this study. 3.Please review the sentence “We connected... master” (lines 422–424) and similar ones. Conduct a thorough proofread of the entire work to ensure that all sentences are complete, easy to comprehend, and in the appropriate tense. ****** 7. PLOS authors have the option to publish the peer review history of their article (what does this mean?). If published, this will include your full peer review and any attached files. If you choose “no”, your identity will remain anonymous but your review may still be made public. Do you want your identity to be public for this peer review? For information about this choice, including consent withdrawal, please see our Privacy Policy. Reviewer: No ******** [NOTE: If reviewer comments were submitted as an attachment file, they will be attached to this email and accessible via the submission site. Please log into your account, locate the manuscript record, and check for the action link "View Attachments". If this link does not appear, there are no attachment files.] While revising your submission, please upload your figure files to the Preflight Analysis and Conversion Engine (PACE) digital diagnostic tool, https://pacev2.apexcovantage.com/. PACE helps ensure that figures meet PLOS requirements. To use PACE, you must first register as a user. Registration is free. Then, login and navigate to the UPLOAD tab, where you will find detailed instructions on how to use the tool. If you encounter any issues or have any questions when using PACE, please email PLOS at figures@plos.org. Please note that Supporting Information files do not need this step. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0304394.r002
Revision 2
26 Mar 2024 Author Response Dear editor, dear reviewers, We are grateful for the positive reception of the paper by both reviewers and the editors. Please find below how we addressed each comment. Reviewer #1: 1. It is recommended that authors explicitly state the study design under Section 3 (Methods). We would like to thank reviewer 1 for this useful suggestion. We added the study design in the beginning of Section 3, in line 247. 2. Considering gender as binary is becoming outdated and unacceptable. Gender, as a social construct, is not binary (male or female). Perhaps sex, a biological construct often measured as binary, could be used in place of gender in this study. This is a very good point by reviewer 1. We changes all references to ‘gender’ in the main text to ‘sex’, and added an explanatory footnote on page 16. 3. Please review the sentence “We connected... master” (lines 422–424) and similar ones. Conduct a thorough proofread of the entire work to ensure that all sentences are complete, easy to comprehend, and in the appropriate tense. We carefully revised Section 4 of the manuscript and corrected any incorrect tenses. We now use the past tense when referring to activities that occurred in the past, and the present tense when making factual statements. We conducted a proofread of the manuscript, and enlisted a professional editor to do the same in an earlier stage. Based on this, we are confident that the work is easy to comprehend. Attachments Attachment Submitted filename: Response to Reviewers.docx https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0304394.r004
13 May 2024 Decision Letter - Yasir Ahmad, Editor Dear admission committee…: Which moves in application essays predict student master grades? PONE-D-23-08316R2 Dear Dr. de Boer, We’re pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been judged scientifically suitable for publication and will be formally accepted for publication once it meets all outstanding technical requirements. Within one week, you’ll receive an e-mail detailing the required amendments. When these have been addressed, you’ll receive a formal acceptance letter and your manuscript will be scheduled for publication. An invoice will be generated when your article is formally accepted. Please note, if your institution has a publishing partnership with PLOS and your article meets the relevant criteria, all or part of your publication costs will be covered. Please make sure your user information is up-to-date by logging into Editorial Manager at Editorial Manager® and clicking the ‘Update My Information' link at the top of the page. If you have any questions relating to publication charges, please contact our Author Billing department directly at authorbilling@plos.org. If your institution or institutions have a press office, please notify them about your upcoming paper to help maximize its impact. If they’ll be preparing press materials, please inform our press team as soon as possible -- no later than 48 hours after receiving the formal acceptance. Your manuscript will remain under strict press embargo until 2 pm Eastern Time on the date of publication. For more information, please contact onepress@plos.org. Kind regards, Yasir Ahmad Academic Editor PLOS ONE Additional Editor Comments (optional): Reviewers' comments: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0304394.r005
Formally Accepted
19 Jun 2024 Acceptance Letter - Yasir Ahmad, Editor PONE-D-23-08316R2 PLOS ONE Dear Dr. de Boer, I'm pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been deemed suitable for publication in PLOS ONE. Congratulations! Your manuscript is now being handed over to our production team. At this stage, our production department will prepare your paper for publication. This includes ensuring the following: * All references, tables, and figures are properly cited * All relevant supporting information is included in the manuscript submission, * There are no issues that prevent the paper from being properly typeset If revisions are needed, the production department will contact you directly to resolve them. If no revisions are needed, you will receive an email when the publication date has been set. At this time, we do not offer pre-publication proofs to authors during production of the accepted work. Please keep in mind that we are working through a large volume of accepted articles, so please give us a few weeks to review your paper and let you know the next and final steps. Lastly, if your institution or institutions have a press office, please let them know about your upcoming paper now to help maximize its impact. If they'll be preparing press materials, please inform our press team within the next 48 hours. Your manuscript will remain under strict press embargo until 2 pm Eastern Time on the date of publication. For more information, please contact onepress@plos.org. If we can help with anything else, please email us at customercare@plos.org. Thank you for submitting your work to PLOS ONE and supporting open access. Kind regards, PLOS ONE Editorial Office Staff on behalf of Dr. Yasir Ahmad Academic Editor PLOS ONE https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0304394.r006

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