eomentl
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Posts posted by eomentl
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I think the review guide I read which said that was the Princeton Review book (might have been a Kaplan, idr). They gave a few sample essays for the different scores, and then explicitly stated that length is one of the key identifiers of the higher scored essays (which is true given their samples). I'm not sure where they got their data/samples, but the way I see it, people who write good essays also happen to write longer essays. So length is a by-product of quality, not vice-versa. If it means anything, my essays were each about 7 paragraphs long and I got a 5.0.
Where have you seen essays/scores Eigen?
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I think both of my responses turned out to be that long (20 minutes at 100 WPM => 20,000 words).
Obviously, it's not the length that matters - it's the arguments that do. But I very thoroughly addressed and overanalyzed all the necessary things. My main weakness was really the organization since I didn't do much revising.
The review guides I read said there is a strong correlation between length and score. Longer essays typically get higher scores.
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I got 149 in verbal approx 450 on the old scale
and 167 in quant approx 800 on the old scale
do i have a chance in the ivy league univs?
or is my verbal too low?
Nobody can answer your first question. Graduate admissions are not based solely on test scores and different schools put varying levels of importance on the GRE. Some schools consider it to be very important, others don't. What I can say is, the rest of your application (academic record, letters of rec., experience, etc.) typically counts for much much more in admissions decisions than GRE scores. As an international, your English test (e.g. TOEFL) does matter, but I seriously doubt that anyone will reject you just because your Verbal score on the GRE is a 149, though it may cause you to loose out in the event of a tie-breaker.
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For all of you engineers who think you need a perfect score on the Quantitative section of the GRE, consider the following:
I sent an inquiry to the UC Berkeley Nuclear Engineering department about their average GRE scores was told that their averages for accepted students for the fast four years was
Verbal____Quant.______Analytic
550______747 (81%)___705
540______755 (83%)___698/4.83
540______771 (86%)___702/4
549______765 (85%)___4.1
So all of you engineers out there who use profanities about getting a "measly" 95th%ile, keep in mind that your score is actually pretty good.
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Oh, you're right! The email is a 16 digit confirmation number that is irrelevant. The registration number is from mygre.ets.org when you 'View Scores Online.' Mine is a 7 digit number with no leading zeroes.
OK, I got the number now. Somehow I missed it when I looked at that page before.
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If you have a confirmation email, it's on there. That's the only way I found mine, but my diagnostic isn't available yet.
Edit: I guess my diagnostic is available.
Q169 (98%): First Section: All correct; Second Section: Missed 1 L5 Geometry
V167 (98%): First Section: Missed 1 L3 Text Completion; Second Section: Missed 1 L5 Sentence Equivalence, 2 L4 Text Completion
Is it that 16 digit Confirmation number? I tried that and it didn't seem to work. Maybe mine isn't available yet? I tested at the end of August.
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For the Diagnostic Service, I'm a bit confused on how to log in. I never received a "GRE Registration Number".
I already posted my scores, but for comparison,
GRE: 1360
SAT: 1300
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The whole point of the GRE is that it's "standardizing"--across all fields--and it's a test of "reasoning" not math or verbal skills. It's not asking "how good are you at math and English?" it's asking "how good are you at figuring out how to take this test?" Which is why it requires (at least some) preparation, no matter how good you are at either math or verbal. Theoretically, everyone should have the "skills" required of the math section (since we all learned them in middle school or high school), but it's testing our ability to remember them and plug them into the tricky, obnoxious questions thrown at you by the test.
I think the whole thing is BS, not to mention cruel, since it doesn't really give any indication whatsoever of how someone will do in graduate school, but it does measure how willing/able most people are to learn/relearn pointless skills that are required of them (like good little lemmings), which may be an idicator of... something? Maybe our desire and drive for grad school based on our willingness to do this crap?
That's my theory anyway.
I agree with all of this.
The verbal correlates to IQ, doesn't it (maybe not after this revision)? So there's that.
I've heard this too, but in my opinion no matter how high your IQ is, if you're asked to find an antonym for a word you've never heard of before, you're not likely to get that question correct. I've never taken an IQ test so I can't compare my IQ to my verbal score.
- kaykaykay and trevortiger
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what do you think about the possibility that ETS made some of the august/september quant sections too easy, in a sense that even if you got everything right, you won't get a perfect score (in other words you would have to be lucky to get hard enough sections)? I keep thinking that they can\t do that but then it just seems perfectly possible given that they didn't have any info then as to what percentage fails at what question...
I would definitely agree with this. The quant on my test was much easier than I thought it would be based on the Kaplan and Princeton Review tests and the questions didn't seem to get any harder from section to section. I was actually concerned I did really bad in the 1st quant section because the 2nd and 3rd quant sections were so easy. I ended up with a 750-800 range and an actual score of 161, 86% (770). My 2nd verbal was significantly more challenging than the 1st.
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@eomentl, so if the math GRE doesn't even give ad comms relevant data for math/engineering applicants and I'm an English Lit applicant, I took an extra hour and a half answering multiple choice math questions why again?
I don't know. If you didn't want to answer the math questions, you didn't have to. I didn't design the GRE, so please don't ask me about why the test is the way it is, I don't know. Why are the Q questions based on 7th grade math? I don't know, ask ETS. The GRE is used by all sorts of disciplines, not just the ones I'm familiar with so everything I say may not apply to other fields i.e. some fields may actually care about general GRE scores and Q scores may actually mean things to them. The GRE is supposed to check general abilities, not specialized abilities. Being able to do theoretical physics doesn't make you appreciably better at doing 7th grade math.
http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=1356
Like I say, a different or just a la carte version of these tests would be nice, and might make the resulting percentiles apply to those who actually care about getting a good result on that portion of the test.
Math & Physics do have a different version of the GRE, they're called the Math and Physics GRE Subject Tests. These factor much more into admissions decisions than the general GRE.
Note: my field (math/physics) does not encompass Engineering, so Engineering ad comms may pay more attention to GRE Q scores, especially since they don't have a subject test (they used to have one, but they axed it because it didn't tell them anything useful). There may also be circumstances in my discipline where the general GRE scores are looked at more carefully e.g. applicants from developing countries.
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Late August test:
V range: 570-670
V score: 159, 84% (corresponds to 590)
Q range: 750-800
Q score: 161, 86% (corresponds to 770)
AW: 5.0, 87%
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While I am merely and English Major, I can't help noticing that my 740 on the math score puts me in the 79th percentile. This effects my own application not at all, of course, but it seems that the economics applicants are all terribly worried that only an 800 [94%ile] is a competative score. If I were on the ad. comms, I think I would view a 79%ile score as low for a math/science program. If the difference between 79%ile and 94%ile truly don't matter, why aren't the tests pass/fail?
I don't know, people in my field didn't design the GRE. At least in my field* (math/physics), the level of the GRE Q doesn't accurately measure an applicant's skills in the first place. A score such as a 740 probably means the applicant just made some silly errors on the test. If a technical major genuinely didn't know how to solve several of the problems on the test, it would probably mean the applicant isn't even capable of completing their major, much less successfully completing grad school.
You're an English major and you got a score comparable to an engineer/scientist, so what? The test is so basic that you can't say that an engineer/scientist has as weak quantitative skills as an English major just because they have a similar score on a middle-school level math test. Sure, my background may allow me to get a top score without having to study much, but the GRE Q isn't any harder than what's on the SAT, which is supposed to measure basic abilities regardless of intended specialty. If an engineer gets a 95% on the verbal, does that mean that they would make a fantastic literary critic? (My guess is no.)
Check out this page for reference: http://www.physicsgre.com/results.php?school=mit
Many applicants with an 800 get rejected but applicants with a 710 and a 740 got in. Like I said before, ad comms in my field have more important things to look at. e.g. research exp., recommendations, coursework, subject GRE, etc.
Also this quote: "while bad GRE’s won’t kill your chances, good GRE’s make it much easier to admit you. (We’re speaking of the Physics GRE, of course; the general tests are completely irrelevant.)" - http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/cosmicvariance/2005/12/20/unsolicited-advice-1-how-to-get-into-graduate-school/
*my field does not apply to all fields, other fields may have a different view e.g. econcomics
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Why give engineering schools a false picture of their applicants, all scoring in the 99% for math, because they beat a bunch of English majors on factoring polynomials or solving for fractional exponents and simultaneous systems of equations? Seems like if you took liberal artsers out of the mix, you'd get a much more accurate picture of the applicants abilities who are actually going to use these skills.
I disagree. I don't think technical departments are getting a false sense of anything on GRE score reports. 1) I think there's enough technical majors taking the GRE that it doesn't really matter and 2) the differences between getting a 750 and a 800 are so insignificant that it doesn't really matter. Perhaps English majors don't have a good feel for this, but as a science major I can say that the quant on the GRE is so stupidly simple that it doesn't pose enough of a challenge to technical majors to be a good measure. In my field*, a 750 and an 800 are viewed as essentially the same thing. Even if you get a "lowly" 730, nobody really cares, some admissions committees don't even look at general GRE scores because its such a poor indicator of anything. That's why I think that there's no sense in creating a separate set for people within the top percentiles. The differences in the top few percentiles are so small that there is essentially no difference between them. If your GRE Q scores are bad enough to be considered a deficiency, it will be noticeable on the current scale of including everyone's scores. There are more important parts of an application to analyze than wondering if the GRE Q score is really an 800 or more like a 797. AFAIK, nobody bases their admissions decisions on such a small difference in GRE scores.
Also of note: http://www.ets.org/s/gre/pdf/gre_guide_extended_table4.pdf
*My field is Physics/Math, both of which have subject GRE tests, so Engineering may be slightly different.
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So here's the thing. Page 117 of the GRE Prep practice booklet from ETS lists predicted score ranges based entirely on your raw score from the practice test. There's really little else to go on except a table on the preceding page which shows what percentage of test takers correctly answered each question. With that said, the range probably matches the best and worse case scenarios based on your raw score. The low-end means every question answered had the easiest weighting, the high-end every question a hard weighting. I reckon the computer-based exam is the same thing or near similar.
I don't think this helps very much. I don't know about you guys, but the Revised GRE I took only had 40 questions per category. The list in the pdf is scaled for 50 questions per category.
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Interesting... This proves that the scores do not scale linearly between formats. If they did, your new scores would be V: 149, Q: 155. Linear conversion formula is New=(Old+1750)/15 for those interested.
To retake or not? Applying for Engineering PhD
in GRE/GMAT/etc
Posted
Some references:
Average scores for accepted students from Colombia's engineering school's admissions page:
V: 519 (64%), Q: 778 (88%), A: 3.6
In my opinion, it is a complete waste of time to retake the test just to bring up your verbal GRE score. Is it exceptional? No. But all things considered, a your verbal score is probably one of the least important parts on your application. I'd say a 64%V is good enough to just move on with your life. I'm assuming that the most important piece of your application tells admissions committees you're a good engineer/researcher. I'm also assuming that the GRE verbal score is not that piece.