How Important is the GRE for Graduate School?

A recurring theme on this blog is that getting into graduate school requires more than just good undergraduate grades. This is true in all disciplines, and it’s true for one simple reason: While grades may be a reasonable indicator of someone’s academic abilities, success in graduate school requires much more than just strong academic abilities. We have explored several other key features of a successful graduate school application, such as how to get the most effective letters of recommendation, and how to craft a convincing personal statement, and how to deal with interviews. We’ve looked at some extra steps that can make all the difference, like targeting the right people and the right programs, and contacting potential graduate advisors before applying.

One topic that has received much less attention so far is the Graduate Record Exam (GRE), which is a required element for application to most accredited graduate programs in the U.S. and Canada. So, today I want to discuss the GRE and the role it plays. My main goal is to alleviate some of the anxiety and uncertainty that many students experience when it comes to the GRE, including those who are preparing to take the exam in the coming months, or who have already taken it and have unimpressive scores.

During my career I have met countless people who were anxious as hell about preparing for and writing the GRE. I’ve met countless more who worried that their mediocre test scores would torpedo their chances of being admitted to a decent graduate program. Behind much of the anxiety has been a tendency to overestimate the importance of GRE scores in the evaluation and selection process. The GRE can have a role, but it is not nearly as significant as most people assume.

If you are worried about the GRE, or concerned about your scores, let me help you put it all into clear perspective, so you can better manage the anxiety. I’m not going to suggest you ignore the GRE altogether, because if you haven’t already taken it, you will probably find it necessary or at least prudent to do so.

How important are those GRE scores?

The answer partly depends on the discipline of study. Generally speaking, the Quantitative Reasoning scores play a more significant role in evaluating applicants to PhD programs in the natural sciences, technology, engineering, and mathematics, than those applying to programs in the social sciences or humanities. If you’re applying to graduate programs in psychology, for example, your GRE scores will likely be among the least heavily weighted factors in determining the fate of those applications (this is also true for the Verbal Reasoning score and the Analytical Writing score). On the other hand, if you’re applying to a program in geophysics, for example, your GRE scores might play a more important role in assessing your suitability for the program; still, even in such cases, those scores will be a relatively minor factor compared to other elements of your application.

Okay, so then why is the GRE used at all? What can be ascertained about applicants from their GRE scores that can’t be discerned from their grades or some other element of the application? Well, just like a grade-point-average (GPA), the GRE scores provide an objective indicator of an applicant’s academic aptitudes. But unlike the GPA, the GRE scores can be used to compare applicants of different socio-educational backgrounds, regardless of which college or university they have attended. Unlike the undergraduate GPA, the GRE provides a measure of academic aptitude that is not influenced by the huge variation that exists in the grading standards and procedures of different courses, professors, departments, faculties, and schools. The rationale behind the use of the test is that everyone writes an equivalent test and all tests are scored the same way. Thus, the playing field is level for all participants.

Anyone interested in knowing what the GRE is all about, how the tests are designed, and how scores might be used to evaluate graduate-school applicants, can find answers by exploring the Guide to the Use of Scores, published by ETS, the organization behind the development and administration of the GRE. The Guide to the Use of Scores includes references to published studies that have demonstrated both the reliability and predictive validity of the GRE in various academic disciplines. Many studies have found a significant correlation between GRE scores and various measures of success in master’s or PhD programs, but some have failed to find similar evidence of a predictive relationship. Most studies have focused on specific fields of study, or on some broader group of related fields.

It is important to keep in mind that the positive relationship between GRE and graduate-school performance — to the extent that it actually exists in a particular discipline — is demonstrated by a post hoc analysis involving people who were actually accepted into graduate programs. It is only a correlation, and it does not mean that getting higher GRE scores will make an individual more likely to experience greater success in graduate school.

Ignore the irrelevant statistics

A person can waste a lot of time reading about average GRE scores in different disciplines, which is a totally useless statistics for anyone applying to graduate school. Someone may try to tell you it’s important to know the average GRE scores of successful grad-school applicants in your discipline because it will help you set your own goals for the test. This is complete nonsense, because the average GRE scores of all those applicants will not help predict whether the scores of a particular applicant will help or hinder their chances of being admitted to any particular program.

Knowing the average GRE scores for a discipline does not reveal what scores an applicant needs to be admitted to any particular program. Just like knowing that the average height for an NBA player is 6 feet 7 inches does not tell us how tall a person must be to play basketball in the NBA. The average GRE scores for those admitted to a specific program is not any more useful as an indicator of what is expected or required. If we are interested in what kind of GRE scores are required, it makes more sense to look at the range of the scores for those admitted to a program. We could say that the lowest GRE scores among those students who were eventually accepted to the program in a given year represents the minimum GRE scores that were necessary to get in. But that would still be an overestimation of the necessary level for GRE scores, because most of those people would still have been accepted even if their GRE scores were even lower. The point is that people don’t normally get admitted to a graduate program on the basis of their GRE scores.

Putting it in perspective

Despite the ostensible merits of the GRE, there is considerable debate about its utility among those who are actually the intended users of GRE scores – namely, university professors. These are the people who decide which applicants are admitted to their graduate programs and which are rejected. If they don’t care as much about GRE scores as they do about the letters of recommendation, or the personal statement, or any other part of the application, then the impact of GRE scores will be minimal.

Opinions vary, but most professors view the GRE as a somewhat dubious indicator, at best, in the assessment and selection of new graduate students. I have been involved in many discussions among university faculty members about the GRE over the past 25 years, and I do not recall ever hearing anyone claim they find GRE scores especially helpful. Some might use very low GRE scores as a justification for eliminating an applicant from the competition, but otherwise they give little credence to GRE scores, whether those scores are mediocre or exceptionally high.

This indifference to GRE scores has been growing within the academic research community in recent years. As an example, consider the Psychology department at Concordia University (Montréal), where I am a professor. Several years ago, we eliminated the requirement that applicants to our master’s and PhD programs had to submit GRE scores. Subsequently, the instructions to applicants have indicated that GRE scores are not required, but still recommended. Most applicants to our programs still submit their GRE scores, and there is no problem with that, but none of them have to submit those scores. Very recently we decided to make a further change to the instructions and remove the recommendation altogether, so applicants will no longer be encouraged to submit GRE scores.

Why did we get rid of the GRE requirement? For the same reason that dozens of other Psychology graduate programs have made the same move: A majority of the faculty members in our department do not believe GRE scores are useful when it comes to discriminating between applicants who are likely to be good graduate students and those with less promise. Remember, most professors judge how “good” graduate students are by their research abilities and accomplishments, work ethic, and interpersonal and communication skills. GRE scores do not tell us anything about how someone measures up on those attributes.

In contrast to the considerable research that has been done regarding the predictive validity of the GRE, very few studies have examined role of GRE scores in the evaluation process. In one study conducted a few years ago, 171 Canadian psychology professors were surveyed about their attitudes and opinions regarding the GRE tests, and how they use GRE scores in evaluating potential graduate students. The main finding was that major differences of opinion exist across psychology disciplines, departments, and faculty members, and as a result, there is very little consistency in terms of what consequences GRE scores have in determining the fate of individual applicants.

When looking at the application requirements for different PhD programs, we find that a majority of programs require all applicants to submit GRE scores, but many programs only recommend that applicants submit GRE scores. Importantly, this distinction is not an indicator of the relative weight given to GRE scores, so one should not assume that just because GRE scores are required, they play a major role in the evaluation process. This is seldom the case.

I still advise students who are planning to apply to graduate school in Psychology to write the GRE General exam. Most will be applying to more than one program, and it is likely that at least one of those programs, if not most, will require GRE scores. But it’s not worth getting worried about. Preparing for the GRE is not very difficult or time consuming. And practically everything else plays a more significant role in the selection process.

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Want Help With Your Applications to Grad School? I Wish You Had Come Sooner

Posted on August 17th, 2017 by Dave G. Mumby, Ph.D.

An old Chinese proverb says, “The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is now.”

I love the wisdom of these words, in both a literal sense and as a metaphor for many situations encountered in life. In a literal sense, the proverb has personal relevance for me, as my wife and I have been growing vegetables in our backyard garden for many years, and I have often yearned to also have a small orchard of apple and cherry trees that would provide a bounty of fruit. I have had this longing for many years, but did nothing about it until I finally planted several apple and cherry trees, two years ago. Pondering this Chinese proverb – especially the second part — helped motivate me to stop delaying and finally plant those trees. We don’t expect significant amounts of fruit for another few years, because trees do not tend to produce very much until they are several years old. But the time will come when our trees are mature and we will have lots of cherries and apples to eat.

The proverb is also a good metaphor for an issue that many college and university students run into when they start preparing to apply to graduate school. Most wait until a few months before applications deadlines before thinking about how they might gain some advantage in the competition for admission, and although it might seem like 4 to 6 months is ample time to put together a winning application, certain essential extracurricular elements can take more like a year or two to put in place.

The best time to begin preparing for graduate school applications is last year

One of the main reasons why certain grad-school applicants are accepted while most are rejected is because the successful ones have effective letters of recommendation from the right people. Most unsuccessful applicants are rejected in part because their letters of recommendation were ineffective. As I have explained in another article, letters of recommendation are highly influential in determining the fate of most graduate school applications – even more so than the applicants’ grades. A professor who only knows a student from the classroom and exam performance will not be able to provide an effective letter recommendation for graduate school. A professor may very well be willing to provide a letter of recommendation for a student who earned an A+ grade in a course, but if the professor knows only about the student’s academic strengths, then there will be very little relevant substance to the letter.

The best time to start taking steps to prepare for grad school is when you still have at least 2 years before you will be applying to programs. This time should be used to acquire relevant experience and set the groundwork for letters of recommendation that will eventually help you get in.

As I have discussed many times before on this blog, the benefits that come from getting relevant experience for grad school preparation usually go far beyond any skills or knowledge that are gained from the experience. Even more valuable is the opportunity to be seen in action and evaluated – to have your best qualities discovered by someone who will later be able to endorse your graduate school application with an effective letter of recommendation.

Everyone knows you need some relevant experience to have a competitive grad-school application, but too many people mistakenly assume the important thing is simply to be able to show evidence of having relevant experience in a CV, in a cover letter, or on an application form. This is a mistake. Just having some amount of seemingly relevant experience does not put anyone ahead in the competition to get into a graduate program, because everyapplicant will have some.

The most significant benefit that potentially comes from getting the right type of experience is that it’s the best way to set up the influential letters of recommendation. Those recommendation letters should describe how the applicant has demonstrated skills, abilities, and character attributes that are essential for success in graduate school. (Read more about the importance of applicant-evaluation forms

GPA Has Little Influence on the Outcome of Most Applications to Graduate School in Psychology

Posted on March 7th, 2017 by Dave G. Mumby, Ph.D.

One of the recurring themes on this blog is that getting into graduate school requires more than just a good GPA. We have previously explored reasons why grades are only a minor determinant of what happens with most applications to grad school, and we have discussed other key aspects of preparing a successful application.

Today, I will use actual data to show just how little influence the GPA had on the outcome for one large sample of applicants to a particular graduate school in Psychology. In the process of analyzing the data, I will attempt to dispel two widely cited myths about what is needed to get into grad school in Psychology:

Myth #1:  Someone with a GPA around 3.8 has a substantially better chance of being admitted than someone with a GPA that is closer to 3.5. This seems like it must be true, but as you will see in the data, it is not necessarily so. The particular GPA values being contrasted here (3.80 and 3.50) are rather arbitrary, as the point will simply be to show how little influence the GPA has, unless it is an exceptionally high GPA and the student is awarded a scholarship.

Myth #2: Higher grades are needed to get into a clinical psychology program than to get into a non-clinical or experimental psychology program. Most psychology students and many professors hold this common misconception. I used to believe it, too. So, for many years, I was just another misguided psychology professor when it came to this issue. That changed one day when I tried to confirm the rhetoric with some real data.

The table below shows three columns of GPAs. The first thing I want to point out is that some are higher than 4.0, which might seem strange if you are used to seeing GPAs only on the familiar and widely-used grading scale that ranges from 0.0 – 4.0. A variety of grading systems are used in North American colleges and universities, including percentages, A – F letter grades, the familiar 0.0 – 4.0 scale, and others. The data in this table are from Concordia University, in Montreal, where the grading scale ranges from 0.0 – 4.3. No matter where grad-school applicants did their undergraduate studies, their transcript grades will be converted to this scale when they apply to any graduate program at Concordia. Details of how the conversion is done are beyond the scope of this blog post. But, a GPA on the standard 0.0 – 4.0 scale is not much different when converted to the 0.0 – 4.3 scale, so you can just think of those GPAs that are higher than 4.0 as being roughly equivalent to a GPA near 4.0.

GPAs of applicants to the Master’s Psychology program (clinical and non-clinical) and rejected applicants  

The data are from a single season of graduate program admissions to the master’s and PhD programs in clinical psychology or non-clinical psychology (ie., research). The size of the total pool of applicants that year was somewhere between 120 and 150. The first column shows GPAs of the 12 students who were accepted into the master’s program in clinical psychology that year. The second column of GPAs belong to 12 students who were accepted into the non-clinical master’s program in the same year. The third set of GPAs is from 12 randomly-selected applicants from the same year who were not accepted to either program.

What do you see in these numbers? One thing you should see is that although the average GPA for those who got into the clinical program is nominally higher than the average for those accepted into the non-clinical program, the difference is small and non-significant. But what about the limited sample size? After all, there are only 12 individuals in each group. What if much larger samples collected over several years of graduate admissions continued to have a mean GPA of 3.85 for applicants admitted to the clinical program and 3.75 for applicants admitted to the non-clinical program. Would it not confirm that you really do need higher grades to get into the clinical program? No, it wouldn’t mean that at all. The average GPA is just that – it’s an average.

If we are interested in what sort of GPA was required, it makes more sense to look at the range of the GPAs for those admitted to the two programs. Both ranges are similar. Applicants didn’t need higher grades to get into the clinical psychology program at Concordia University than to get into the non-clinical program, at least not in this particular year. A GPA around 3.30 was sufficient for either program.

Myth #2 is in fact a myth.

Now, look at that third column of GPAs. They represent applicants who applied to either the clinical or non-clinical psychology programs, but were not accepted. The average is slightly lower than for the other two columns, and the lowest end of the range is a bit lower, as well. But the differences are marginal. We can’t reliably distinguish between successful and unsuccessful applicants on the basis of their GPAs! Whether a GPA is 3.5 or 3.8, it is well within the range of GPAs for either the successful or unsuccessful applicants. Several applicants were admitted with a GPA lower than 3.5, and several failed to get in with GPAs much higher than 3.8. By itself, GPA seems to poorly predict the outcome of applications to graduate school in Psychology.

Look again at that third column. Some rejected applicants had very high GPAs. This just goes to show that truly outstanding grades do not guarantee a successful application to grad school. For some readers this means another myth is busted.

Finally, you might be wondering why there are no really low GPAs in the sample of rejected applications; by that I mean no GPAs below 3.0. This is simply because very few people with grades below that level end up applying to graduate school. Most wouldn’t even consider it, as they correctly assume that their grades are too low. Of course, a GPA below some level is likely to correctly indicate that someone should not be in graduate school and they probably wouldn’t make it through certain programs. That level is much lower than 3.5, and it’s probably a little below 3.0 for most graduate programs in psychology.

Students who thought they were unqualified for grad school because their grades are not outstanding should be encouraged by the data. You don’t need an outstanding GPA that’s almost at the top of the scale – you can get into a top-rated graduate program with grades that are very good, which tends to mean equivalent to an average letter-grade of around A- or B+. Importantly, your chances will only be realistic if you have all the other essential elements the admissions committees and prospective graduate supervisors are looking for. It happens all the time. If you haven’t already seen it, check out this previous post about a guy who got into Cambridge University with a GPA of 3.27 (on the 0 – 4.3 scale).

Meanwhile, many students with stellar GPAs mistakenly believe that’s all they need to get in. But, check that assumption against the data shown here; notice the high GPAs among the sample of rejected applicants. Some individuals were passed over in favor of others who had considerably lower grades. Most likely most of the rejected applicants were missing key elements, so despite their outstanding grades, they were not among those applicants deemed most likely to succeed in the program. Just as likely, some of them might have requested the wrong professors to have as their supervisor, without realizing that in almost any graduate program the professor who an applicant requests to have as supervisor will be the one to decide who to accept or reject. There are many reasons why a professor might not be interested in an applicant, and any one of them is sufficient to thwart an application.

Do you have questions or comments about anything mentioned in this article? Please consider sharing them in the comment section. I will try to answer any appropriate questions. Alternatively, if you are interested in communicating directly with me to receive personalized guidance and advice on any aspect of your educational or career planning, you might consider using my consultation services. We can cover a lot of ground in 30 minutes!