Promoting Inclusive Recruiting and Selection Into Military Training Schools: Admission Waivers Versus Retesting

There is high-level interest in diversifying workforces, which has led organizations—including the U.S. Armed Forces—to reevaluate recruiting and selection practices. The U.S. Coast Guard (USCG) has encountered particular difficulties in diversifying its workforce, and it relies mainly on the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery (ASVAB) for assigning active-duty recruits to one of 19 specialized training schools. When recruits’ scores fall below ASVAB entrance standards, the USCG sometimes offers admission waivers. Alternatively, recruits can retest until their ASVAB scores meet the entrance standard. Retesting has shown mixed results in the personnel selection literature, so our main interest is to determine whether retesting or waivers best support USCG recruits’ training school outcomes, especially for recruits identifying as an underrepresented minority (URM). We use data from 16,624 USCG recruits entering between 2013 and 2021 and fit augmented inverse propensity weighted models to assess differences in training outcomes by pathway to admission while accounting for self-selection into pathways. Our analyses found (a) no difference in training outcomes between recruits who qualified from their initial scores and recruits who retested, (b) recruits who received waivers were less likely to complete training school on time and spent more time in remedial training when they failed training school compared to those who retested, and (c) improvement in training outcomes for retesting over waivers was larger for recruits identifying as an URM. Results suggest that retesting may be an effective strategy for workforce diversification and for improving outcomes among recruits identifying as an URM.