GRE for PhD

[Bassam]

Hello everyone,

I hope You're well. I recently graduated Master's degree in Microbiology & Immunology, and now, I'm preparing for applying to PhD programs in related fields. I remember I heard in the past that the admission department for life sciences fields focus more on the math section score for the GRE exam, especially for students with English as a second language. I'd like to ask if someone have an idea about this, so I can focus more on the math section during my preparation for the GRE? Thank you in advance.

[Bioenchilada]

The math section is more important than the verbal for the sciences;however, you can't fail the section either. Try to score >70th+ percentile on both.

[aberrant]

Couple years ago when I apply graduate schools I know that one should aim for +80% for quant and +50% for verbal. For Yale, they specified that sub-50% of any of these sections would be detrimental to your application.

[BeakerBreaker]

I just wanted to say I think it's interesting that people think quantitative matters more for biology - mostly because I've never heard that before, and didn't have that impression originally. Also, most of the biologists I know are not particularly good at quant, nor do they ever seem to need it (making a vast generalization here). 

It's been my impression that verbal reasoning, whatever that is, is at least as important for the vast majority of biologists. It's actually quite embarrassing when you run into professors who suffer in that category - even more so when they have some god awful fixation with forcing their students to "learn to write," or "learn to speak," when in reality it's just a projection of their own deficits... *shakes fist*

I've never seen a grad school biologist suffer because they couldn't do 8th grade-era math, but I have certainly seen them suffer because they don't know how to read or write decently.

Edited June 10, 2016 by BeakerBreaker

[Bioenchilada]

31 minutes ago, BeakerBreaker said:

I just wanted to say I think it's interesting that people think quantitative matters more for biology - mostly because I've never heard that before, and didn't have that impression originally. Also, most of the biologists I know are not particularly good at quant, nor do they ever seem to need it (making a vast generalization here). 

It's been my impression that verbal reasoning, whatever that is, is at least as important for the vast majority of biologists. It's actually quite embarrassing when you run into professors who suffer in that category - even more so when they have some god awful fixation with forcing their students to "learn to write," or "learn to speak," when in reality it's just a projection of their own deficits... *shakes fist*

I've never seen a grad school biologist suffer because they couldn't do 8th grade-era math, but I have certainly seen them suffer because they don't know how to read or write decently.

I don't think the Verbal section effectively shows a student's ability to read or write though. Lol

[BeakerBreaker]

47 minutes ago, Bioenchilada said:

I don't think the Verbal section effectively shows a student's ability to read or write though. Lol

To be honest, I don't think the GRE is good for much of anything >< But this is what we have to work with

[aberrant]

16 hours ago, BeakerBreaker said:

I just wanted to say I think it's interesting that people think quantitative matters more for biology - mostly because I've never heard that before, and didn't have that impression originally. Also, most of the biologists I know are not particularly good at quant, nor do they ever seem to need it (making a vast generalization here). 

It's been my impression that verbal reasoning, whatever that is, is at least as important for the vast majority of biologists. It's actually quite embarrassing when you run into professors who suffer in that category - even more so when they have some god awful fixation with forcing their students to "learn to write," or "learn to speak," when in reality it's just a projection of their own deficits... *shakes fist*

I've never seen a grad school biologist suffer because they couldn't do 8th grade-era math, but I have certainly seen them suffer because they don't know how to read or write decently.

Capable of doing "baby math" is rather fundamental for being in STEM field. Most STEM majors learned those "baby math" before or at the beginning of their college career which are, often times, prerequisites for their major/core classes. That being said, when compare STEM students to non-STEM students, doing well in GRE quant is basically a common expectation. It doesn't make you a Math genius, but as any of the prospective graduate student sin STEM field, one should be capable of doing "8th grade-era math". To me, GRE quant is merely a formality, yet it is still useful to eliminate those who did not do well in that section, unfortunately (or suspiciously).

Meanwhile, GRE verbal isn't even a "reasoning" test per se --- it is a section to showcase your vocabularies (in my perspective as an international student, non-native speaker). Speaking of writing, I'm almost certain that those words that I have encountered/seen associated with GRE verbal test would not be applicable in my field. The idea of writing is to communicate ideas clearly and logically, not necessarily using big words that remind others I am the second coming of Frasier Crane or Sheldon Cooper (a bit of a stretch, I know).

And I'm unsure how GRE analytical writing works, as I have been told that the grading is rather subjective and adcom tends to ignore the score unless you scored like a 1.5 or 2.