swisnieski

Err, well, only the first point describes why universities want you to take the GRE. The other two points just relate to the "importance" of the GRE generally. As I have said elsewhere, the GRE does give the admissions committees at least SOME useful information. They would not require it otherwise. If nothing else, it tells them how good you are at studying for and taking very important tests -- which is an obviously useful skillset to have in graduate school.

I said that GPA by itself is a poor indicator of how well one will do in graduate school (since undergrad work differs massively from grad work). It provides SOME useful information, re: study habits and the like, but not enough to make an informed decision on. Hence the necessity of other components of the admissions model. Again, a bad GRE score is no reason to despair -- admissions is a holistic process so if your app is otherwise solid, a low GRE score won't tank it (probably). But that doesn't mean the GRE is useless. LOL, well, that prof is full of crap. The GRE is not a measure of intelligence; if it were it would be nearly impossible to study for it!

If you don't get in anywhere, take a year off -- do some research, get an internship, whatever, to boost your "market value" in the eyes of grad school admissions committees. Maybe even take some extra classes to bring up your GPA. Joining the military is also always an option, and would moreover allow you to take care of the pesky financing problem.

Well, it is a poor indicator BY ITSELF. And when paired with other indicators like GPA, research experience, publications, and letters of recommendation, it accounts for a relatively small portion of the variance. But it is still accounting for that portion of the variance, and eliminating it from consideration will weaken, not improve, graduate admissions decisions. (GPA by itself is also a poor indicator, by the way; does anyone think we should ignore GPA?) Grad school admissions is a probabilistic process -- they are trying to decide the people who they think will have the highest probability of success. They need as much information as possible to make that happen. FYI, if nothing else, the GREs measure your ability to take tests well. If you're the kind of person who panics when taking important tests and winds up flubbing horribly, isn't that something the graduate admissions people have a right to know? All that said, of course, GREs really ARE only one part of your application. They can hurt your chances but cannot negate them entirely. If you have a solid GPA, good letters of recommendation, an outstanding SOP, and plenty of useful experience in your field (research, internships, etc.), I doubt you will be kept out solely on the basis of poor GRE scores.

As per the above poster, if you have the resources, do it. Personal visits can make a really big difference. The fellow from How I Got Into Stanford had a mediocre GPA but was admitted to the #1 psych program in the country in part because he made extensive contacts with the professors there.

Thanks for the tip psydd!

Looks pretty solid to me. Your GPA's not the best but your research experience makes up for it well enough, I think. You probably won't get into any Ivy Leagues but I think you'll be a good candidate anywhere else.

Thanks for the heads up psycholinguist. Incidentally I just e-mailed Deryl Bem a day or two ago asking if he was still taking on grad students; he told me he is not. Sandra Bem is an option although I am not overly fond of the social constructionist approach to human sexuality. I may consider broadening out my approach to include relationship research generally, which gives me a good deal more options -- Vivian Zayas at Cornell, Brooke Feeney at CMU, etc, although they may not feel like I'm a good match for them. I'd like to stay in the states, which rules out some of the better-known researchers on the topic of asexuality (e.g., Tony Bogaert at Brock Univ. in Canada, Cynthia Graham at Oxford). Others aren't really social psychologists at all; Nicole Prause @ Idaho State, for instance, is a clinician. Looks like Indiana @ Bloomington is probably my best bet, although I was hoping I might find a better fit somewhere nearerby. Oh well.

Hey all, I'm currently devising a research plan to study asexuality in humans (yes, about 1% of people experience no sexual attraction at all). However, I've run into a pretty massive road block: there seem to be very few psych professors in the United States whose research interests include sexual orientation! This is a pretty big problem since it seems grad schools will turn down even obviously qualified applicants simply because there is no one who can advise their research suitably. Thus even though I have a pretty strong app I think (1460 GREs, 3.7 GPA, one research publication done and two more studies currently in progress, 3+ semesters as a research assistant, very strong letters of recommendation), the research area I want to pursue most desperately may well be so obscure that I won't get in anywhere. Does anyone know of any psych professors at schools with grad programs in psychology have research interests in sexual orientation, or have programs that touch on sexual orientation broadly? Thanks, sw

Hey all-- So I'm applying for grad schools this semester (surprise!) and something leapt out at me that I had never considered before when I was looking at my transcripts just now -- I have seven course withdrawals, four of which came from my current school. Now none of these are in particularly essential courses. The three from my old school were introductory astronomy (the professor was worthless), honors geology (it just bored me to tears), and statistics (which I subsequently took at my new school and passed). At my current school, three were for minors I dropped when I discovered a thoroughgoing hatred for the professors and/or subject matter (two in sociology, one in political science), and one was for my current minor (English), dropped in order to lighten up an otherwise unbearable courseload. I am applying for a doctoral program in psychology, have a 3.71 GPA (3.8 in my major, in which I haven't dropped a single course), solid GREs (1460), a research publication of my own and have worked three semesters as a research assistant, plus teaching experience on top of that, so I think I have a pretty solid application. But are these W's going to drag me down in the eyes of the admissions folk?

1400's not perfect but it's a damn good score. Paired with a 4.0 GPA, that's a strong application you have there. This is basically correct. I believe the reviewers use logistic regression to model which applicants will be most "successful" and assign fellowships accordingly (with GPA, verbal and quant GREs, subject GREs, sex, minority/non-minority status, and mean z-score of reviews for reference letters and essays entered as terms in the equation). So assuming your GPA and GREs are high enough to get you considered in the first place, they merely become one component of a larger equation.

Like the poster in the linked thread said, always better to err on the side of formality and have a professor tell you his preference ("please, just call me Bob") than informality and receive a slight scolding ("That's Dr. Johnson").

Thanks... I'm worried the AWA score looks unimpressive to some of the better schools (I thought I blew that section outta the water) and that my research/teaching experience isn't competitive enough. My senior thesis was on vengefulness and forgivingness, but at the grad level I'd really like to do some work on romantic attachments and the psychology of romantic break-ups.-

Hi all, hoping I could have my general qualifications for grad school evaluated. I'm a psychology major at a small public liberal arts college on the east coast, interested in pursuing a doctorate in social/personality or cognitive psych (not my first choice but it seems to be where all the resources are): UGPA: 3.71 (psych-only 3.8, last two years 3.75) Verbal GRE: 740 Quant GRE: 720 AW GRE: 4.5 (very disappointed ) I am anticipating publication of my senior thesis results in an undergraduate research journal sometime in the next few weeks. I'm also working as a research assistant for two professors simultaneously and have worked as one in a previous semester for the departmetn chair. I am an attached tutor (my school's equivalent of a TA) for a stretch-model introductory English course in which I basically teach for 50 minutes a week, and I tutor psychology, statistics, and writing at my school's academic support center. I expect, at the least, a VERY strong letter of recommendation from my department chair, a very good letter from my undergraduate advisor, and at least a good solid letter from the other professor for whom I am serving as a research assistant (but with whom I've never had any classes). I'm applying to the following schools, in rough order of awesomeness of grad program: Yale, Carnegie Mellon, Cornell, Washington University in St. Louis, Johns Hopkins University, University of Pittsburgh, University of Maryland, Rice University, and Florida State (there's a brilliant professor there I'd like to study under). Feedback would be much appreciated.

That IS why I said "all other things being equal." ;-) Like I said, admissions is a holistic process.

Merely writing a thesis won't really do anything for you. (Almost everyone does it at some point). Getting it published, however, helps tons. Some schools allow you to send demonstrations of your work, as well; if you don't get it published you can always bring your thesis to their attention this way.

I think this is basically right here, as well. Obviously if you're a 3.9 student and you go up against a 3.9 student from Cornell, the Cornell kid wins. And you may even lose out if you have a 3.9 and he has, say, a 3.8. But a 3.9 from any school would probably beat, say, a 3.5 from any other school any day of the week -- provided all other things are equal, of course. I don't think your school will be a disqualifying factor. Remember that admissions is a very holistic process -- they incorporate as much information as they can into their decision. (Admissions departments frequently make use of multiple regression algorithms to do this). As such there is probably never one factor, taken by itself, that will automatically disqualify you from getting in anywhere.

I memorized approximately 115 words (ones plucked out of the glossary in the Princeton Review GRE book that I didn't already recognize). I got a 740 verbal. To be fair, my personal vocabulary was huge to start with -- I knew the word "vicissitudinous" when it made a surprise appearance at the end of my test, and it wasn't one of the 115 I studied.

Nope, ETS says they are unofficial: You will view unofficial Verbal and Quantitative scores at the test center; however, because of the essay scoring process, you will not view your Analytical Writing score at that time. Test centers cannot provide printed copies of score reports. Official Verbal, Quantitative and Analytical Writing scores will be sent to you and the score recipients you designated within 10 to 15 days after you take the test. Allow sufficient time for mail delivery from Princeton, New Jersey, USA. These scores are also available through the Scores by Phone Service. (SOURCE: http://www.ets.org/portal/site/ets/menu ... f95190RCRD) I suspect this is just legal CYA though. I cannot imagine a circumstance under which scores would be changed for the worse after the student had already decided to send them to certain grad schools.

It depends on the school you want to go to, but if you want to make a good impression, shoot for 90th or even 95th percentile in verbal, which would be around the high 600s to low 700s I believe. I doubt they will look much at quantitative for an art history program.

I assume you are taking new tests each time and not merely repeating the old ones? You will always do slightly worse than a test you've done before. Trust me, when test time comes, you will probably do better than the practice tests are predicting. Something about being in that testing booth with all the weight of your future bearing down on you MAKES you pay attention.

This was true with me as well. POWERPREP under-predicted my verbal score by 30 points and my quant by roughly 80. That said, I have always been a fairly good test-taker.