American Studies Application - Fall 2017

[amstu]

Bemoaning GRE scores is its own form social discourse. I get that. 

However, my faculty mentor recently told me that GRE scores (at any rate, in their department) are used as a preliminary tool to get the applicant pool down to a manageable size. This was shocking. I am putting together a thoughtful, careful and, (to me) exciting application but the reality that none of it may even be looked at due to the preliminary round of cuts is disheartening. 

I'm wondering if there is anyone with experience in administration or admissions that can confirm or deny that this is in fact how GRE scores are used in departments, in particular in American Studies. I'm not really looking for a pile-on of despair: rather, I'm wondering if anyone knows that this is factually the case. 

[hj2012]

The general consensus among my grad students friends at conferences like ASA is that "cut offs"are quite common - enough so that you should take the GRE very seriously. One reason for this is that graduate student funding often comes from a competitive university-wide pool, where GRE scores are an important factor in comparing students across disparate fields. At other universities, the graduate division or office of graduate education has to approve students admitted by departments, where again GRE scores are an important metric. And finally, there is already a surfeit of excellent applicants with thoughtful, careful, and exciting applications, so it doesn't make sense to risk admitting a student with sub-par scores that might be uncompetitive for funding, especially this day and age. On the bright side: above a certain threshold, I don't think getting a higher score helps you all that much. I would think a combined score of >310 would be safe for most AMST programs, with the V score being the more important. 

Edited June 23, 2017 by hj2012

[amstu]

I appreciate this additional information. I fundamentally disagree with this metricizing on principle, but acknowledge that I may need to either (1) not apply (2) or direct much more attention from my writing, research and letter to prep for the quantitative test.