Theory007

For those of you waiting for the results, last year, I used this website to have an idea on when to expect results from some of the more popular schools. https://martindevaux.com/2020/11/political-science-phd-admission-decisions/  (I don't think they have added 2021 results yet, though.)
Also, generally, it's almost always Ohio State that announces the results first among top 20 (3rd week of Jan), then Rice, Wisconsin and WUSTL follow. Most of the schools do not release decisions until the second half of February so you might want to find/visit hobbies during this time. 
Good luck to you all!

Yep, but word of caution to everybody applying to OSU: the department sends acceptances ~Jan 20 but they only send the results of the university-wide funding competition about a month after. Last year I got my acceptance and thought I was all good but I was notified that I was on the funding waitlist in February. Just wait until you have the funding letter before you celebrate!

Actually, I am beginning to think there is no point in me posting here further. Respond with a yes or upvote if I should leave the forum and I will.

Since you say you are responding to what I said, please allow me to respond. All I ever said was the following:
1. The GRE is a predictor of success in graduate school
2. If people disagree with this claim they have to present evidence against it
3. The supposed evidence presented in the one post I responded to did not constitute evidence
And then the conversation turned nasty. 
Now, one thing I did not say a word about is how adcoms actually admit students - because it is an entirely separate question. I clearly have no idea what goes on in the minds of people who admit and deny students, and I never claimed that I did. All I said was that higher GRE scores correlate with better performance in graduate school and this still seems very hard to deny.
Consider the admission statistics for UCSD (and virtually every outstanding program will show something similar):
https://polisci.ucsd.edu/grad/prospective-students/admissions-statistics.html
It's clearly a top-program that admits students with very high GRE scores. How can this be?
Either
1. All applicants have high GRE scores such that students are surely not admitted because of their GRE scores. Or
2. The admission committee selects students on the basis of high GRE scores. Or
3. The admission committee selects whoever is deemed most capable or better suited for the department.
It's clear that 1 is false; there is a ton of variability in GRE scores and clearly not everyone can be in the 90th percentile of the verbal portion of the test for example. I think 2 is probably true for some programs. It is at least true that there are some places that use the GRE to distinguish between otherwise similar candidates. 3 is - in my view - most likely to be true. Adcoms select the overall best students (most likely to succeed) and they happen to have higher GRE scores on average. And this is my point: GRE scores correlate with performance. At the very least one cannot deny that higher GRE scores correlate with a higher probability of admission to top program. That is what these admission stats show.
Now, @PolPsychGal11 you say both of the following
In effect, it sounds like you are saying that when it is hard to evaluate a candidate's credentials, adcoms do in fact look at and take the GRE seriously. But if the GRE does not predict success (per your first statement above) why would anyone consider the GREs at all? i.e. how would it help to discriminate among certain international applicants? It sounds to me as if you think that the GRE does in fact correlate with success in grad school (or at least that adcoms do consider GRE scores) but when students can demonstrate their potential in other ways, adcoms tend to look at those other things. Or am I getting something wrong? Either way, this is exactly my point: GRE scores do correlate with grad school success, which is why you and I agree that @sbidyanta should keep his/her hopes up!
Just to be clear: do not mean any of what I say above in a combative manner. I am simply very interested in this stuff.

Since you say you are responding to what I said, please allow me to respond. All I ever said was the following:
1. The GRE is a predictor of success in graduate school
2. If people disagree with this claim they have to present evidence against it
3. The supposed evidence presented in the one post I responded to did not constitute evidence
And then the conversation turned nasty. 
Now, one thing I did not say a word about is how adcoms actually admit students - because it is an entirely separate question. I clearly have no idea what goes on in the minds of people who admit and deny students, and I never claimed that I did. All I said was that higher GRE scores correlate with better performance in graduate school and this still seems very hard to deny.
Consider the admission statistics for UCSD (and virtually every outstanding program will show something similar):
https://polisci.ucsd.edu/grad/prospective-students/admissions-statistics.html
It's clearly a top-program that admits students with very high GRE scores. How can this be?
Either
1. All applicants have high GRE scores such that students are surely not admitted because of their GRE scores. Or
2. The admission committee selects students on the basis of high GRE scores. Or
3. The admission committee selects whoever is deemed most capable or better suited for the department.
It's clear that 1 is false; there is a ton of variability in GRE scores and clearly not everyone can be in the 90th percentile of the verbal portion of the test for example. I think 2 is probably true for some programs. It is at least true that there are some places that use the GRE to distinguish between otherwise similar candidates. 3 is - in my view - most likely to be true. Adcoms select the overall best students (most likely to succeed) and they happen to have higher GRE scores on average. And this is my point: GRE scores correlate with performance. At the very least one cannot deny that higher GRE scores correlate with a higher probability of admission to top program. That is what these admission stats show.
Now, @PolPsychGal11 you say both of the following
In effect, it sounds like you are saying that when it is hard to evaluate a candidate's credentials, adcoms do in fact look at and take the GRE seriously. But if the GRE does not predict success (per your first statement above) why would anyone consider the GREs at all? i.e. how would it help to discriminate among certain international applicants? It sounds to me as if you think that the GRE does in fact correlate with success in grad school (or at least that adcoms do consider GRE scores) but when students can demonstrate their potential in other ways, adcoms tend to look at those other things. Or am I getting something wrong? Either way, this is exactly my point: GRE scores do correlate with grad school success, which is why you and I agree that @sbidyanta should keep his/her hopes up!
Just to be clear: do not mean any of what I say above in a combative manner. I am simply very interested in this stuff.

I mean, just to name a couple, professors at Columbia and NYU mention on their "Advice for prospective PhD students" pages that GREs are very important for admissions - see http://macartan.nyc/teaching/applying-for-a-phd/ and https://cyrussamii.com/?page_id=2121. The faculty present at Stanford's "Pathways to PhD" informational session also said the same. So that's three top departments saying GREs definitely matter, even if just for an initial screening of the candidates or whatever.
I have my doubts on whether it is predictive of future success and there certainly are cultural biases - the verbal section was particularly difficult for me as a foreigner and it hardly speaks anything of my ability to read and interpret the PS literature. But scores seem to matter for most departments.

As an international student who studied really hard for a good GRE score, this is extremely disheartening. Unlike domestic students, most of us from the Global South have very few opportunities to get research experience. Our GPA's would be lower because of archaic grading schemes, and our Letters of Recommendation are likely from people unknown in the West. That only leaves the SoP and the GRE as a level playing field (even in the former, not having access to the same mentoring opportunities with people who are familiar with American graduate system is a crutch). To hear that a high GRE scores means literally nothing is pretty sad for me personally, and I guess my chances of getting accepted anywhere is pretty much gone now. It was good knowing you all, I guess I'm stuck in my country for the rest of my life.

Some of the math questions have examples about baseball or stuff like that. That is just a small example of how it's problematic. 
 
This is wrong. There's a a lot of empirical research on how GRE does not correlate with success or ability. 

Virtually all of this research has a selection problem and is (mathematically) biased and causally useless. Additionally, while polisci encompasses both ends of the verbal-math spectrum with theorists on one side and methodologists on the other, the modal student studies CP and needs to be well-balanced in both being able to comprehend words and understand math. These are non-negotiable skills. This is in contrast to fields where a lot of this "empirical research" on the GRE has been conducted on -- mainly science -- where practical lab work, coding, grant writing, actual science knowledge are obviously more important than reading and math. 

All respect but this is a small example indeed....How is this evidence of cultural bias? Baseball is played in many parts of the world, with huge followings in Latin America and Asia......In any case you don't really need to know what a "run" is or how one is scored, or what happens when the catcher drops the third strike, or really anything about baseball at all to figure out how many runs are scored per game on average, or whatever the question asks you to do statistically. They could ask a question about cricket, would it really matter? Would that really disadvantage American students who have never seen a cricket match in their lives or might they intuit the nature of the statistical problem in spite of this?
 
I do feel somewhat responsible for broaching the GRE question, but mine was really an "is it important" not "should it be important" question....Bottom line is this question will never have a true and final answer....I'm sure there are studies which "prove" and "disprove" the importance and predictive power of the test. Until they can hook up applicants to some sort of brain scan which perfectly analyzes their academic future we'll likely have to rely on such imperfect measures as the GRE.
 
 
 
 

I'm willing to accept this.
It certainly is unfair that students with more financial leverage can take the exam several times and those without cannot. But this is not really a fault of the test but that people do not have the same access to it (which is still a problem).
It does not constitute evidence that you can cite a professor or two who says this. There is absolutely no doubt that higher scores on the GRE correlate with ability. Again, it may not be a perfect measure, but the GRE together with other elements of the application gives a pretty good picture of the student.
Explain to me how the test is culturally biased. Is it that questions are asked in a way that is easier to understand for certain groups of people? You must be implying that the test does not really measure the potential of students such that those who the test is biased against actually do better than the biased test predicts when then go to graduate school. But there is no evidence of this; the GRE predicts extremely well how students do in their grad programs so it's hard to see how it could be culturally biased. Students with low score do worse than students with high scores. I am still not saying that the GRE is the only thing that matters. I'm only saying that it predicts performance and it does.

I think that because the GRE is still basically optional at most programs (the ones I've researched anyway), this will probably be another reason why the number of applicants will remain at historical highs, since that significantly reduces the cost/effort involved in applying.
Thankfully I took the GRE about 4 years ago, and pretty much nailed it (167 V, 161Q, 5.5 Writing). I'm assuming this would give me a considerable advantage over someone who has not taken the test, ceteris paribus. Does anyone have any thoughts or insights on what a strong GRE score means in a pool of applicants where many have not taken the test?

afaik there's no indication on the test itself, though I disagree with the implication of consideration being tied to the format you chose (though, as above, this doesn't warrant further argument)

AFAIK decision timelines vary a lot across universities, from late January until early-mid March. It might be worth checking the previous app cycle threads and see when people reported results from each department, as they seem to release results more or less on the same period every year (for instance, Berkeley seems to always send offers around January 30th-February 1st). Someone also collected this data for most universities on this link: https://imgur.com/a/EuNTB

Help! I am an Economics Ph.D. student from Syracuse University, bullied by my advisor, Professor Stuart Rosenthal.

All I ever argued is that the GRE is still a relevant factor in current admissions and I asked how the GRE was culturally biased and undermined diversity. You can say that whatever I said is being dismissive and painting with a broad brush, but this is still not a legitimate critique given what I actually said (I don't want to repeat this for the third time here).
Well I replied - just now - to two of the three comments in response to what I said - I'll get to the last one and I'll easily lay out there references.
You may think that I am taking an odd tone on this topic, but why would it matter that I am getting pushback? I actually don't understand this? Should I give in simply because people disagree with me? Regarding the tone, remember that I am merely responding to your accusation that I am taking a glib view when I am obviously not. I am trying to have a conversation about stuff and it is fine - I think - to be direct. And I did not launch accusations your way but responded to what you said. The references you posted still do not support your point. I don't think when people claim that the GRE is biased that I am the one obligated to defend the opposite position. You have to show the evidence for the astonishing idea that it is biased or not correlated with ability. And your evidence does not hold to to scrutiny. I explain in detail why. I don't know why this is so upsetting to you. 
No I did not read your profile and this seems to have offended you lol. I was under the impression that people posting in this thread were people applying in the current year to political science programs. So I made a huge mistake there. But since you are in a grad program, my point about B-grades and ultimately how the article does not go against the view that the GRE correlates with ability should be clear to you. Is it not?
And I still think that when people post "evidence" for something that clearly does not support their position, then it is fair to assume that they either did not read or understand what they presented. Be honest - did you in fact read the article or did you skim the abstract? I'm guessing the latter.
Either way - this is derailing this thread and I suggest that we end our discussion here so people can use this space more productively. The admission process to political science programs continues to be grueling, and I - like many others - are here to help and support the best we can.

If you revisit my original post you will notice that I did not make a blanket statement, but said that some students who do well on the GRE do not succeed in their grad programs and some students who do poorly do succeed. But this does not take away from the general trend that higher GRE scores leads to better grad program performance on average. I looked up the articles you mentioned and there are numerous problems with the first study at least (which is the only one I looked at in more detail).
1. I don't want to go into detail, but using very unsophisticated methods the authors find only partial support only for the hypothesis you put forward.
2. Besides the authors are trying to tease out how a particular GRE cutoff affects different students and finds that since underrepresented students tend to pass the third statistics course at the same rate of students with higher GREQ scores, that the implementation of a GREQ cutoff is barring such underrepresented students who would otherwise have passed that course (with a B).
As you will learn if you enter a graduate program, B is a passing grade in a graduate course but there is much institutional pressure to give students passing grades. Everyone will get at leas a B except if it is completely indisputable that a student will not be able to complete the program. See on page 214: "Of note, all students who fully matriculated from all GRE-Q score groupings passed the statistics courses with a 3.0 (B) or better.". Lol, everyone in the sample got a B or better.
Also note that this does not in any way contradict the fact that students with higher GREQ scores do better. Indeed, students with higher GREQ did better in the mentioned statistics course, i.e. were more likely to get As, and therefore GRE scores do predict performance in terms of grades at least. There really are more things I could say, but at best the study is not inconsistent with what I said earlier.
I would also generally advice against the practice of linking to articles that you either have not read, do not understand, or have not thought about enough to see if they support your point. Indeed, I could also post a bunch of articles below that find the opposite, but it is not - IMO - particularly useful for anyone.
Again, all I am saying is that the GRE correlates with ability, and there is - just like IQ tests predict intelligence - no doubt about it as far as I can tell.

I'm willing to accept this.
It certainly is unfair that students with more financial leverage can take the exam several times and those without cannot. But this is not really a fault of the test but that people do not have the same access to it (which is still a problem).
It does not constitute evidence that you can cite a professor or two who says this. There is absolutely no doubt that higher scores on the GRE correlate with ability. Again, it may not be a perfect measure, but the GRE together with other elements of the application gives a pretty good picture of the student.
Explain to me how the test is culturally biased. Is it that questions are asked in a way that is easier to understand for certain groups of people? You must be implying that the test does not really measure the potential of students such that those who the test is biased against actually do better than the biased test predicts when then go to graduate school. But there is no evidence of this; the GRE predicts extremely well how students do in their grad programs so it's hard to see how it could be culturally biased. Students with low score do worse than students with high scores. I am still not saying that the GRE is the only thing that matters. I'm only saying that it predicts performance and it does.

I'm willing to accept this.
It certainly is unfair that students with more financial leverage can take the exam several times and those without cannot. But this is not really a fault of the test but that people do not have the same access to it (which is still a problem).
It does not constitute evidence that you can cite a professor or two who says this. There is absolutely no doubt that higher scores on the GRE correlate with ability. Again, it may not be a perfect measure, but the GRE together with other elements of the application gives a pretty good picture of the student.
Explain to me how the test is culturally biased. Is it that questions are asked in a way that is easier to understand for certain groups of people? You must be implying that the test does not really measure the potential of students such that those who the test is biased against actually do better than the biased test predicts when then go to graduate school. But there is no evidence of this; the GRE predicts extremely well how students do in their grad programs so it's hard to see how it could be culturally biased. Students with low score do worse than students with high scores. I am still not saying that the GRE is the only thing that matters. I'm only saying that it predicts performance and it does.

If you revisit my original post you will notice that I did not make a blanket statement, but said that some students who do well on the GRE do not succeed in their grad programs and some students who do poorly do succeed. But this does not take away from the general trend that higher GRE scores leads to better grad program performance on average. I looked up the articles you mentioned and there are numerous problems with the first study at least (which is the only one I looked at in more detail).
1. I don't want to go into detail, but using very unsophisticated methods the authors find only partial support only for the hypothesis you put forward.
2. Besides the authors are trying to tease out how a particular GRE cutoff affects different students and finds that since underrepresented students tend to pass the third statistics course at the same rate of students with higher GREQ scores, that the implementation of a GREQ cutoff is barring such underrepresented students who would otherwise have passed that course (with a B).
As you will learn if you enter a graduate program, B is a passing grade in a graduate course but there is much institutional pressure to give students passing grades. Everyone will get at leas a B except if it is completely indisputable that a student will not be able to complete the program. See on page 214: "Of note, all students who fully matriculated from all GRE-Q score groupings passed the statistics courses with a 3.0 (B) or better.". Lol, everyone in the sample got a B or better.
Also note that this does not in any way contradict the fact that students with higher GREQ scores do better. Indeed, students with higher GREQ did better in the mentioned statistics course, i.e. were more likely to get As, and therefore GRE scores do predict performance in terms of grades at least. There really are more things I could say, but at best the study is not inconsistent with what I said earlier.
I would also generally advice against the practice of linking to articles that you either have not read, do not understand, or have not thought about enough to see if they support your point. Indeed, I could also post a bunch of articles below that find the opposite, but it is not - IMO - particularly useful for anyone.
Again, all I am saying is that the GRE correlates with ability, and there is - just like IQ tests predict intelligence - no doubt about it as far as I can tell.

Hi all! First-year PhD student who used the board last year popping in to wish you all good luck. The application process really sucks but I promise you you all will make it through. Make sure you recognize both the benefits and drawbacks of this board - it is great to connect with others going through the same thing as you but make sure you find things to do outside of checking this board, especially once you get to late January/early February. I'm not sure I have much to offer at this point in the process but feel free to shoot me a message if you think I can be of any help. Again, best of luck!

This is obviously anecdotal, but I spoke to several professors in my political science department (one that yields a lot of applicants each year) and they all told me that having taken and performed well on the GRE was beneficial, even with the test being optional at a lot of programs.

If you are serious about going to graduate school, I will very highly recommend that you apply to at least a handful of schools. I'm sure you can find more than just a single one that offers what you're looking for.

How is the GRE biased and undermines diversity? I'm genuinely curious. The GRE measures ability (or correlates with it) and there is tons of evidence for this. Sure some people do well in graduate programs with a low score but GRE and some people with high GRE scores do poorly. But on the whole it predicts performance.

Probably the point of making it optional is to not automatically disqualify students who are coming of age during the pandemic and thus have no access to the exam, no? Not that the test doesn't or shouldn't matter. Certainly I can imagine what a competitive profile looks like without a GRE score. Yet it's hard to believe that given two otherwise identical profiles, where one has a strong GRE score and the other no score, they would be treated the same or as if the score doesn't exist.