Graduate School and the GRE exam...

[gigi]

@JustAnotherGeek

IIRC, something like 10% of the people who take the basic GRE get an 800 on the math. Something like only 0.1% get an 800 on the verbal.

At least when I took it, you could get some questions wrong and still get an 800 (unlike on the SAT I believe). That helped me on math and analytical.

As far as how the schools use the scores, there’s admission and then there’s financial aid. Again, this could be outdated but when my mom and then I were applying to grad school in the late 80s/early 90s, the GREs were the big indicator of how much scholarship money you would get. I was only an average student in college but got good GREs and a full fellowship.

[DVsickgirlDV]

@JustAnotherGeek

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Also… and I don’t know if this is worth anything… I read somewhere that the writing section is graded by college professors. Now, out of the three sections, this is usually my weekest. I had the choice of a couple of topics; the one I picked was somewhat political. When I wrote my response, I decided to try to give it a left-leaning slant. Not over the top, but decidedly liberal. I don’t know if the views I wrote effected my score, but I got one of the highest scores possible. Not bad for a scientist-type.

Good luck.

So many myths to dispell! No, the essays are not graded by “college professors.” They are graded by ETS employees. Most of them are average Joe’s like you or me with some sort of liberal arts degree. They do not care about “content” per say - mostly can you effectively defend your arguement. It is a VERY formulaic process and most GRE prep books cover and very easy. Most essay readers literally spend about 5 minutes TOP reading the essays. They look at mostly length, read your opening paragraph and your conclusion and maybe read the first few lines of each paragraph in between. When I used to teach test prep, we stress to work hardest on the opening paragraph and your conclusion.

[JustAnotherGeek]

@DVsickgirlDV

So many myths to dispell! No, the essays are not graded by “college professors.” They are graded by ETS employees. Most of them are average Joe’s like you or me with some sort of liberal arts degree.

Interesting. I know that the readers have only a short time with the writing sections, however that does not disprove my point. I wonder if there has been any study done to see if there is a correlation between the similarity of opinions between reader and writing sample and score.

I will freely admit that there is another possible explanation for my higher than normal (for me) score. It is possible that in picking a slant, I gave my samples a coherent theme. OTOH, I am not sure that the themes in these two writing samples were any more or less coherent than the themes in some of my other writing samples.