emilyrobot

I like to spend this day every year doing a little reading about Dr. King, and I happened across the following in one of the online document archives I was browsing:

"King took the examination on 3 February. A table enclosed with the test report indicates that his verbal aptitude score is in the second lowest quartile and his quantitative score is in the lowest ten percent of those taking the test. In the advanced test in philosophy, King's score (on a scale of 100) places him in the lowest third, while his other scores (on a scale of 800) are in the lowest quartile in all the subject areas except literature, where he placed in the top quartile."

http://mlk-kpp01.stanford.edu/index.php/encyclopedia/documentsentry/doc_510306_000/

So, whatever the GRE is measuring, it certainly isn't an infallible measure of your global verbal skills, guys. Arguably the greatest orator in American history couldn't crack the 50th percentile on the verbal. Just thought I'd add some perspective for all of us who are fretting over how we measure up.

I like to spend this day every year doing a little reading about Dr. King, and I happened across the following in one of the online document archives I was browsing:

"King took the examination on 3 February. A table enclosed with the test report indicates that his verbal aptitude score is in the second lowest quartile and his quantitative score is in the lowest ten percent of those taking the test. In the advanced test in philosophy, King's score (on a scale of 100) places him in the lowest third, while his other scores (on a scale of 800) are in the lowest quartile in all the subject areas except literature, where he placed in the top quartile."

http://mlk-kpp01.stanford.edu/index.php/encyclopedia/documentsentry/doc_510306_000/

So, whatever the GRE is measuring, it certainly isn't an infallible measure of your global verbal skills, guys. Arguably the greatest orator in American history couldn't crack the 50th percentile on the verbal. Just thought I'd add some perspective for all of us who are fretting over how we measure up.

I like to spend this day every year doing a little reading about Dr. King, and I happened across the following in one of the online document archives I was browsing:

"King took the examination on 3 February. A table enclosed with the test report indicates that his verbal aptitude score is in the second lowest quartile and his quantitative score is in the lowest ten percent of those taking the test. In the advanced test in philosophy, King's score (on a scale of 100) places him in the lowest third, while his other scores (on a scale of 800) are in the lowest quartile in all the subject areas except literature, where he placed in the top quartile."

http://mlk-kpp01.stanford.edu/index.php/encyclopedia/documentsentry/doc_510306_000/

So, whatever the GRE is measuring, it certainly isn't an infallible measure of your global verbal skills, guys. Arguably the greatest orator in American history couldn't crack the 50th percentile on the verbal. Just thought I'd add some perspective for all of us who are fretting over how we measure up.

I like to spend this day every year doing a little reading about Dr. King, and I happened across the following in one of the online document archives I was browsing:

"King took the examination on 3 February. A table enclosed with the test report indicates that his verbal aptitude score is in the second lowest quartile and his quantitative score is in the lowest ten percent of those taking the test. In the advanced test in philosophy, King's score (on a scale of 100) places him in the lowest third, while his other scores (on a scale of 800) are in the lowest quartile in all the subject areas except literature, where he placed in the top quartile."

http://mlk-kpp01.stanford.edu/index.php/encyclopedia/documentsentry/doc_510306_000/

So, whatever the GRE is measuring, it certainly isn't an infallible measure of your global verbal skills, guys. Arguably the greatest orator in American history couldn't crack the 50th percentile on the verbal. Just thought I'd add some perspective for all of us who are fretting over how we measure up.

I like to spend this day every year doing a little reading about Dr. King, and I happened across the following in one of the online document archives I was browsing:

"King took the examination on 3 February. A table enclosed with the test report indicates that his verbal aptitude score is in the second lowest quartile and his quantitative score is in the lowest ten percent of those taking the test. In the advanced test in philosophy, King's score (on a scale of 100) places him in the lowest third, while his other scores (on a scale of 800) are in the lowest quartile in all the subject areas except literature, where he placed in the top quartile."

http://mlk-kpp01.stanford.edu/index.php/encyclopedia/documentsentry/doc_510306_000/

So, whatever the GRE is measuring, it certainly isn't an infallible measure of your global verbal skills, guys. Arguably the greatest orator in American history couldn't crack the 50th percentile on the verbal. Just thought I'd add some perspective for all of us who are fretting over how we measure up.

I like to spend this day every year doing a little reading about Dr. King, and I happened across the following in one of the online document archives I was browsing:

"King took the examination on 3 February. A table enclosed with the test report indicates that his verbal aptitude score is in the second lowest quartile and his quantitative score is in the lowest ten percent of those taking the test. In the advanced test in philosophy, King's score (on a scale of 100) places him in the lowest third, while his other scores (on a scale of 800) are in the lowest quartile in all the subject areas except literature, where he placed in the top quartile."

http://mlk-kpp01.stanford.edu/index.php/encyclopedia/documentsentry/doc_510306_000/

So, whatever the GRE is measuring, it certainly isn't an infallible measure of your global verbal skills, guys. Arguably the greatest orator in American history couldn't crack the 50th percentile on the verbal. Just thought I'd add some perspective for all of us who are fretting over how we measure up.

I like to spend this day every year doing a little reading about Dr. King, and I happened across the following in one of the online document archives I was browsing:

"King took the examination on 3 February. A table enclosed with the test report indicates that his verbal aptitude score is in the second lowest quartile and his quantitative score is in the lowest ten percent of those taking the test. In the advanced test in philosophy, King's score (on a scale of 100) places him in the lowest third, while his other scores (on a scale of 800) are in the lowest quartile in all the subject areas except literature, where he placed in the top quartile."

http://mlk-kpp01.stanford.edu/index.php/encyclopedia/documentsentry/doc_510306_000/

So, whatever the GRE is measuring, it certainly isn't an infallible measure of your global verbal skills, guys. Arguably the greatest orator in American history couldn't crack the 50th percentile on the verbal. Just thought I'd add some perspective for all of us who are fretting over how we measure up.

I like to spend this day every year doing a little reading about Dr. King, and I happened across the following in one of the online document archives I was browsing:

"King took the examination on 3 February. A table enclosed with the test report indicates that his verbal aptitude score is in the second lowest quartile and his quantitative score is in the lowest ten percent of those taking the test. In the advanced test in philosophy, King's score (on a scale of 100) places him in the lowest third, while his other scores (on a scale of 800) are in the lowest quartile in all the subject areas except literature, where he placed in the top quartile."

http://mlk-kpp01.stanford.edu/index.php/encyclopedia/documentsentry/doc_510306_000/

So, whatever the GRE is measuring, it certainly isn't an infallible measure of your global verbal skills, guys. Arguably the greatest orator in American history couldn't crack the 50th percentile on the verbal. Just thought I'd add some perspective for all of us who are fretting over how we measure up.

Keep an open mind.

I applied to three schools, and by the time I'd gotten all the acceptances, my opinions about the three had almost exactly reversed from my earlier opinions. I was pretty sure by about January that I wanted to go to one school, but I ended up waiting until the deadlines, and I'm glad I did. My choice stayed the same, but there were some huge back and forths in the middle- fellowship offers, etc. Had I chosen early and then gotten those, it would have made me wonder if I made the right decision. As it was, I could take them into account, weigh all the facts and still feel happy about my decision.

It's great that you're having such a nice response from school A, but school B just may not have started going through apps yet- once they do, they may be just as enthusiastic or more.

I should add, you're talking about neutrality... What actually made me switch my order of preference initially was that I went into several of the interviews with a strong bias towards the other school... And because of that, the faculty made a lot harder sell of their program, and I asked a lot more pointed questions. It made them work to convince me, but also I felt very good about it, because I got my opinion flipped starting from a bias, which was pretty impressive.

That said, if your situation plays out at all like mine, be prepared for both a hard decision, and the possibility of not-so-great responses from the school you turn down. I got told quite brusquely and point blank that I was making a big mistake and the wrong decision when I told one school I was going elsewhere... Ran into that person doing recruiting for my program two years down the line, and they were still a bit miffed that I didn't go there.

Right, it's not actually called a reading comprehension test. It's a graduate admissions test, designed (like IQ tests and SAT/ACT tests) to assess your aptitude, not the skills you've already acquired.

I don't think too highly of the GREs, honestly. It's certainly not perfect test by a long shot. Some of the validity research is kinda self-fulfilling (for instance, if the receipt of fellowships is dependent in part on GRE scores, it makes sense that people with higher GRE scores would be more likely to finish their degrees, because they're more likely to get funding). A lot of the weight that admissions programs put on GRE scores has less to do with people thinking that the GRE is a great test, and more to do with how heavily US News and World Report weights average GRE scores of students when ranking programs. So, I'm not super invested in defending the test itself.

However, as an applicant to PhD programs in education the following is kind of a hobbyhorse of mine: these tests are extensively researched, by both ETS and independent evaluators. That's the reason everybody has to sit for an experimental section, for example. Populations and averages are compared, the test is normed, individual results are compared to future performance and results on other, similar tests. That doesn't mean they're infallible, of course--some of the research will even demonstrate specific flaws in the test. None of the questions are just made up by some dude, and it seems pretty arrogant to me when people critique standardized tests based on what makes sense to them. Not that you can't criticize! But you should have a basic understanding of the ways that tests are designed and written and some ability to read the research that looks into their effectiveness. I know hard science types don't always take the social sciences terribly seriously, but we do have methods, some of them rigorous, to look into these types of problems. I try not to bother Biologists with my kooky theories about how to revise taxonomies of living things (let's categorize by size and color! That just makes sense to me!), and I wish my own discipline ever got the same measure of respect.

Whew, I guess according to the rant above, I have Feelings About This. To be clear, the above rant isn't directed to any individual person here, please don't take offense!

The thing is, the GRE isn't supposed to test your reading comprehension, not really. It's supposed to predict your ability to do well in grad school, and depending on whose research you read, it does an Ok-to-terrible job at this. From my (very brief) review of the research, it seems to be so that there is certainly a difference in, say, the performance of folks who scored in the 25th or below and those who scored in the 75th percentile or above, but I don't think even ETS claims that the test is useful for predicting differences between, say, the 89th and 92nd percentile scorers. The subject tests are somewhat better than the quant/verbal tests, and the analytical section was pretty useless (which is why they dropped it).

If there was research that demonstrated that people who can pee without mess in the dark consistently earn high GPA's in graduate schools, adcoms might call you in for a pee test. If there was a similarly strong correlation between people who could accurately answer questions about reading passages where every 4th word was written in Arabic, and people who could successfully complete grad programs, then maybe that's what the test would look like. Neither test would be fair, neither test would contain good writing, and neither would say much about your reading comprehension per se, but if the correlation was really high, grad schools would be interested in it.