Some Thoughts on the GRE

[bridgephil]

For all their flaws (the fact that they are timed, the fact that the verbal reasoning section is at least 50% a vocabulary test, etc.), the verbal reasoning and analytic writing sections test for skills that you actually do need to be a good philosopher. Vocabulary aside, the verbal reasoning test does test your ability to analyze complicated prose, identify faulty reasoning, discern author intent, etc. Verbal reasoning/logic stuff, basically. The analytic writing section also tests your ability to do those things (although less so than verbal reasoning), and on top of that it tests your ability to explain and synthesize information and make structured, organized arguments. It seems to me like the analytic writing section should be the most relevant of the GRE scores for evaluating philosophy candidates, which is strange because most departments basically don't care about AW at all since they have your writing sample. 

Basically this is all just me leading up to complaining about the quant section. Why is it relevant at all? (Gah, angst) I think the idea is that hey, math is kind of like logic (esp. formal logic), so your quant score might give us a rough indicator of how good you are at logic. Admittedly, it does seem pretty similar to formal logic, so I could see reasonable people using the quant score when evaluating philosophy applicants who want to specialize in formal logic or mathematical logic or something similar. But most philosophers don't use formal logic in their papers, and even when they do, they make their reasoning explicit verbally (or at least, most of them do). You don't necessarily need to be good at formal logic to be good at philosophy - you just need to be decent at discerning the informal logic implicit or explicit in people's arguments, which are usually written in such a way that even people who are bad with symbols can understand them, and you need to be good enough at logic in general to make coherent, logical arguments. So just use the quant score to evaluate applicants who want to study formal logic (or something like it), and ignore it for the rest of us.

But wait! People who like the quant section will argue that the quantitative reasoning test measures some sort of general logical ability, an ability that is relevant to being a good philosophy person in general regardless of whether you do formal logic or not. But this 'general' logical ability, if it is indeed relevant to doing most philosophy at all, starts sounding an awful lot like verbal reasoning and analytic writing. I seriously can't imagine how being good at math could be related to doing philosophy in general (except maybe formal logic and closely related subjects) without basically telling myself that it measures some sort of very general logical ability that ends up looking a lot more similar to the other portions of the GRE. If this ability looks more like verbal reasoning or analytic writing insofar as it is related to most philosophy, then why not just focus on VR and AW scores? Why the hang up on Q?

Also, it strikes me that all the same arguments for why AW are not important should also apply to Q and VR. Either your GRE scores reflect some of your inherent ability or potential to be good at philosophy, or they don't. If they don't, then obviously we should trash them and stop making applicants pay a ridiculous amount of money to take the GRE, prep, and send in their scores. If, on the other hand, your GRE scores DO reflect some of your inherent ability/potential as a philosopher, then presumably it's because they measure your ability or potential to engage with the literature on complicated philosophical topics, interpret arguments, analyze arguments, and construct arguments (I'm taking it as a given that being good at this stuff is basically what makes one a good philosopher). So either this ability is reflected in your writing sample, or it's not. If it is not, then writing samples shouldn't matter. If it is, then all the arguments for basically completely dismissing analytic writing scores apply, and admissions committees should dismiss Q and VR scores just as much as they dismiss AW scores. I think if anything they should be even more dismissive of quant scores because philosophy majors are way more likely to be in practice with analytic writing (since they actually have to write on a regular basis, which means that they can't just let their analytic writing skills atrophy) than they are at Q. The Q section measures something totally irrelevant to doing well in philosophy (except, perhaps, formal logic) and it seems completely ridiculous to suggest, as most admissions committees seem to, that it is more important than analytic writing.

Anyway, you can probably tell from this that my quant score is abysmal (alas, 43rd percentile). *sigh* Apparently when I'm stressed out about the admissions process (have only heard back from one school, and it was a rejection) I just angrily analyze the idea that the weakest part of my application should be given any weight at all.

[libraryghost]

Agreed, I think Its a largely useless test that doesn't tell the admissions committee any more than your writing sample would. Still, try not to stress about your Q score. Mine was about as bad as yours and I still got in somewhere (with funding!). It depends on where you apply I guess and what else you have going for you.

Good luck with the rest of your applications!

 

[Derrida]

Agreed. 168 Verbal, 149 Quantitative, 5.0 AW. I goofed on the AW, particularly on the first essay. I am pretty sure that the first essay scored a 4, and the second a 6, hence resulting in a 5. Regarding the way in which departments look at the GREs, I think it depends, as you’ve said, in your interest. If your interest lies in Analytic Philosophy, then you’re Quant scores may matter a little more. If you’re continental, then obviously the verbal is the one that matters more. However, I’ve also read that some departments don’t really care about the GRE and rather just use it for funding purposes. UCR, as I gather, cares merely for totals rather than particularly V or Q. I can’t really comment on the Analytic side, but I know for Continentals, based on everything I’ve been told by professors, the Math section is not important. 

[Neither Here Nor There]

My quant GRE was also terrible. My AW was a 5.5. It was the only section I did well on. Not a coincidence. I expect to be shut out because of it, though I am continental and hope the person above me is right that the quant will just be ignored.

Personally, I think the whole thing does not tell much. Sure, the verbal is related, but my writing samples and letters show more about my ability to read and analyze difficult concepts. The test just tests if I can analyze them quickly and think about the answers in a very black and white way.

Perhaps the worst part of the whole thing is the amount of time that is wasted studying it. I am learning Latin and had to take off time studying for Latin to work on math skills. Latin I need. Math I don't. And I will add that I actually know how to do the math questions for the most part . . . what I can't do is solve them quickly because I've lost the formulas or quick tricks. So I'm too slow to get a good score. I had some of the same problems on the verbal though not as bad, hence not a bad score on the verbal but not a great one either.

Really, it just sucks. It should go away. And gosh, damn it, if it shuts me out. I understand perfectly why it would shut me out. If the application pool is 250, and they have 5 spots, why would they choose the person with the low GRE? But if we eliminated the test and instead asked for things that really help our success (like language skills), I think that would be a much better way to narrow down applicants.

[Neither Here Nor There]

And I agree that the AW is by far the closest to what we do in philosophy. In fact, it is quite related. I wrote one of mine on Heidegger. haha. However, even as someone who got a 5.5., I don't think it says much about my writing abilities. It just says I an write an essay the GRE way in 30 minutes. In the real world, we write much slower and often in a more creative ways. Its not that useful. By the time you are applying to phd programs, a standardised test should not be necessary. 

[genderphage]

Yeah I did really well on the GRE, mainly because I got a bunch of flashcards to learn the vocabulary and my undergrad was in maths & philosophy, also I did lots of Maths Olympiad stuff at school which is pretty similar to that kind of question. (and despite that I've only got rejections so far, although admittedly only 2/10) & Everyone I've heard says it can only be a stumbling block in it's a mark against you if you have bad Verbal scores and doing well isn't seen as indicative of much they can't work out from letters/writing sample

I didn't prepare much for AW aside from looking at their ideal answers and working out what they asked for, partially because that form of structuring arguments is exactly what my work in developing philosophical skills so far has been about

 

I was consistently amazed it's considered a grad-level exam tbh, is it similar to other American styles of testing? Like it's the first multiple choice exam I've done since I was like 14 haha

[syn]

From what I understand, it really isn't all that important, and is only used [in most departments] as a secondary or tertiary score, and sometimes in consideration for requirements for Fellowships and the like.  I see plenty of [self-reported] perfect scores and perfect GPAs on here, yet many of them received rejections.  Goes to show that even with top scores, there are other things far more important.  If I had to take a guess, I'd bet it's a combination of  1. conference/publication/research track record, 2. writing sample, and 3. letters, not necessarily in that order.

For the record, I too was very worried about my GRE scores.  I'm a bit "later in life" and hadn't had a math class in somewhere around 14 years, and math was never my strong suit, with my highest college-level math class being regular ole Algebra I.  But thanks to that 5 lb book of GRE questions, which showed the methodology behind the solution of each question, I was able to find some patterns and memorize basic equations.  I was happy enough that I scored a 153 quant (51st%) and called it a day.

Similarly, I too was a bit confused that departments don't care more about the AW since it seems, in my opinion, to be the thing most applicable to philosophy (with a close second being verbal reasoning).  But I think many departments see that a writing sample is far more indicative of an applicant's philosophical ability to understand an issue or problem, construct a solution, argue for it well, recognize and dispel objections, and do all of that in a way that's clearly organized.  That's my suspicion, at least.

[Xia1]

I think the GRE is simply one more way to eliminate candidates from an ever increasing pool for a limited number of spots. As far as your ideological opposition goes because of the quantitative score's questionable (at best) relevance to being a good philosopher, I think many adcoms would be happy to admit that it has little relevance to philosophical skills at all. They simply would just prefer the candidate who is likely to be a good philosopher, and also good at math. Why not? They have to find some way of eliminating candidates, and when you have about 25+ equally qualified, superb candidates for 10 spots, any criteria to make those cuts easier are likely to be appreciated. That being said, I suspect that a decision between two equally qualified candidates rarely (if ever) comes down to a difference in their GRE Q score. Also fun to keep in mind is that high GREs mean more funding, so the department also has a monetary interest in admissions (yay). Though, so do we, so let's not be hypocrites. I suppose my big cynical point is that the GRE Q score probably isn't very relevant at all to being a good philosopher, and admissions knows that/doesn't care that much, and is still justified in using it for reasons other than determining a candidate's potential in philosophy. I just think the fact of the matter is that there's more to admissions than simply being a good philosopher, and (at least at this point in our journey) we have to try to become not merely just good philosophers, but good applicants as well. 

[Xia1]

Here's another fun fact. We may complain now that admissions is more competitive and less relevant to being a good philosopher than ever before, and our professors never had to go to the lengths we do to even be considered for admission. But forget not that there was once a GRE Philosophy subject test. The details of this test are sparse, but it seems that it was largely a glorified philosophy trivia questionnaire, and that to prepare for it, many applicants would work through the ENTIRETY of Frederick Copleston’s nine-volume A History of Philosophy. The only thing less likely to be relevant to being a good philosopher than the Pythagorean theorem is knowing that the Kalam cosmological argument started with al-Ghazali rather than Averroes, or that Lycan is not strictly a functionalist (and yes, I definitely didn't just know those two things off the top of my head). 

[Neither Here Nor There]

3 hours ago, syn said:

Similarly, I too was a bit confused that departments don't care more about the AW since it seems, in my opinion, to be the thing most applicable to philosophy (with a close second being verbal reasoning).  But I think many departments see that a writing sample is far more indicative of an applicant's philosophical ability to understand an issue or problem, construct a solution, argue for it well, recognize and dispel objections, and do all of that in a way that's clearly organized.  That's my suspicion, at least.

Right so if the writing sample is a better way to test that . . . so shoundn't other things be a better way than the verbal test, which only tests your ability to memorize vocabulary words? . .. like say the fact that I made all As in my philosophy courses? Heidegger is some of the hardest stuff to read, and I have written and understood him. I've also read him in German. Is the GRE really a better test to these reading abilities than my coursework and language study? its like good grief.

and my math was worse than yours (though I was scoring around the 151 on the practice test, I didn't to finish the test and it pulled me down). I think it will shut me out, because if the final pool is between really good and somewhat equal applicants, the person who studied well for the GRE will pull up top. 

But I do resent that. I have a publication. Four conference papers. Three degrees with straight As in all my coursework. Good letters and good thesis. And I  know those things can't get you in of itself, but the GRE should not be relevant to whether I make the cut, but it will.

Edited February 8, 2018 by Neither Here Nor There

[kretschmar]

I think @Xia1's analysis is correct. The GRE is a rough measure of overall academic aptitude, and the majority of the philosophy profession would likely agree that it is of limited use, considering philosophy's internally high academic standards. Its minor weight in admissions reflects this attitude. However, it is still an academically meaningful measure. The resentment toward the GRE (which I certainly shared while studying for it!) rests on an assumption that only those skills directly involved in success as a philosopher should be considered in admissions. But in reality, all sorts of barely relevant factors can affect one's chances of admission. This is simply what happens when you ratchet up the competitiveness of any process: more and more insignificant factors begin to gain weight. Consider that an undergraduate GPA, understood to be one of the three most important factors in grad admissions, contains within it an enormous amount of 'irrelevant' coursework, e.g. one's entire freshman year. Yet considering overall GPA for graduate admissions is entirely reasonable. Neither the GRE nor one's freshman coursework speaks directly to one's capacity as a philosopher, but both speak to one's general capacities and aptitudes as a student. Should these be all important? No. Should they carry the same weight as upper-level philosophy coursework? No. But they are still academically relevant, and in an ultra-competitive process, committees are justified in considering them.

I think this is @Xia1's point in saying there is merit in striving to be a good applicant, not just a good philosopher. Very few people – though they are out there – score above a 335 without significant study. One of several things a committee learns about an applicant when they see a near-perfect score is this: s/he is willing and ready to do concentrated study of uninteresting material, merely to ace an arbitrary measure and be a better applicant to their program. This characteristic is actually highly relevant to success in academics. The GRE is far from the last time graduate students are required to expend energy jumping though seemingly irrelevant hoops. For this reason alone, success in the quantitative section is fair game for discriminating between applicants.

It is a separate , worthwhile question whether the GRE ought to continue being required. I suspect that in ten years, it will not. The winds are against it, and against standardized measures generally. But without it, there is no sense of general aptitude, and as a result, the influence of grade inflation (and the disparities therein) could increase, as GPA would have no comparative measure alongside it to counterbalance it. This, it seems to me, could have the further consequence of heightening the already powerful preference for students from elite institutions, where GPA can be trusted as a rigorous measure. I happen to think a standardized measure is a good idea. A philosophy subject test seems a preferable measure, actually. I certainly would have preferred studying Copleston to GRE math.

Lastly, I agree with others that the writing section is at least as relevant to philosophy as the quantitative one. Producing and evaluating clear arguments seems more worth consideration than mastering ETS's devious mental math tricks. I suspect the AW is ignored merely because it was introduced later. Admissions committees, which care very little for the GRE to start with, have little incentive to add another, non-composite number to their already tortured calculations.

 

Edited February 8, 2018 by kretschmar

[soproperlybasic]

@kretschmar Often the students who score a 335 on the exam had significant training or help (like GRE classes) that probably didn't come for free. Sure, it's possible a student sat down and self studied and somehow achieved a perfect score...but more often than not, those kinds of scores say more about an applicant's access to GRE resources than anything. Not to mention the outrageous price of the test itself, and that some people are lucky enough to have the money to take it more than once to improve their score. 

[poppypascal]

The major problem with the GRE is that it's owned by a private company which exploits its monopoly position to rip off students who often don't have a couple hundred dollars to fork out for a multiple choice test, let alone enough to retake it if they screw up the first time around. If the US government wants to nationalize the test and make it basically free and 20 bucks for a re-take within the year, that'd alleviate a lot of the injustice of the test to start off.

When it comes to the test itself, I have to disagree with most of you, I think the writing section is an utter waste of time. All it measures is your capacity to waffle in a limited time on a usually pointless question. If you have a proper exam at the end of secondary education, like most countries do, there's no reason to have such a childish and ultimately useless test for people who have undergone 4 years of higher education.

I would do away with the test altogether; to my knowledge, they do fine in Europe without it. What is it about the American system that makes these multiple choice quizzes necessary? Most of us here, with enough work, could score near perfectly on the test. All it tests is your willingness to waste several weeks or months revising high school mathematics so that when the time comes you can calculate the square of the hypotenuse in record time. Much better off having rigorous testing to graduate high school and a mandatory undergrad thesis to see how well you can undertake big research projects...

[Scoots]

Regardless of whether the GRE says anything about philosophical ability, I do think it says a lot about your ability to quickly understand and learn certain types of information. Someone may be an awesome philosopher but take a very long time and need lots of help to understand the philosophers they read. It doesn’t seem outlandish to suggest that PhD programs would prefer an awesome philosopher who can also quickly process and understand the texts they’ll be reading for coursework. The GRE verbal test does seem like a good test for this. Of course, understanding such texts quickly is less important than being an awesome philosopher, which is why the GRE is not very important for admissions.

The quantitative test is useful for certain types of analytic philosophy. Obviously it’s not really useful for continental, but then I’ve never seen any evidence that having a low quantitative score actually harms applicants to continental programs. Certainly on here, people post acceptances with very low quantitative scores.

The AW section, by contrast, doesn’t tell committees anything useful about the applicant’s philosophical writing ability that the writing sample doesn’t say already. So even if it did test “producing and evaluating clear arguments”, it would be at best useless. Moreover, the fact that the range of vocabulary used and the length of the essay are both proportional to the AW score rather suggests that there should be little correlation between AW scores and philosophical aptitude. 

I think that the GRE reveals far less about money and preparation than where one went to college does. That factor is acknowledged by all to play a bigger role in admissions, but in the US it is a) contingent on SAT/ACT performance, which is even more tutorable than the GRE (spoken as someone who teaches both), and b) contingent on extracurriculars, legacy gifts, etc.; so it seems even more predictive of wealth and privilege than the GRE. If anything, then, the GRE can be a useful corrector to this, as you really don’t need to study or pay for lessons to get a perfect score. 

 

[dgswaim]

I've been on team Trash The GRE In General for a while.

[dgswaim]

Also, just in case it makes anyone feel better, I got a 149 on my quant section, and I did fine. And this for someone that does philosophy of science and logic!

[Neither Here Nor There]

4 hours ago, poppypascal said:

The major problem with the GRE is that it's owned by a private company which exploits its monopoly position to rip off students who often don't have a couple hundred dollars to fork out for a multiple choice test, let alone enough to retake it if they screw up the first time around. If the US government wants to nationalize the test and make it basically free and 20 bucks for a re-take within the year, that'd alleviate a lot of the injustice of the test to start off.

 

Spoken like a philosopher!  The real reason we have this gosh awful test is that it makes money! I also would not complain if it was cheaper to retake. But it cost me a fortune to take the test and then send all the scores. Its quite frankly ridiculous, but such is life in capitalism.

Edited February 9, 2018 by Neither Here Nor There

[Neither Here Nor There]

2 hours ago, Scoots said:

 

Edited February 9, 2018 by Neither Here Nor There

[Neither Here Nor There]

5 hours ago, poppypascal said:

 I would do away with the test altogether; to my knowledge, they do fine in Europe without it. What is it about the American system that makes these multiple choice quizzes necessary? Most of us here, with enough work, could score near perfectly on the test. All it tests is your willingness to waste several weeks or months revising high school mathematics so that when the time comes you can calculate the square of the hypotenuse in record time. Much better off having rigorous testing to graduate high school and a mandatory undergrad thesis to see how well you can undertake big research projects...

Also, a good point. I can make a good score. By using all my time that I need to be spending studying Latin memorizing vocabulary and relearning the math tricks. That's it. The test really doesn't test anything other than the fact that you had time and resources to study. That you devoted time isn't a bad quality to have, certainly, because it says a lot about your devotion to learning in general, but there could be more holistic things to look for . . like one's foreign language skills or logic skills. 

[soproperlybasic]

2 hours ago, dgswaim said:

Also, just in case it makes anyone feel better, I got a 149 on my quant section, and I did fine. And this for someone that does philosophy of science and logic!

I can echo this! I got a 148Q the first time I took it and a 151Q the second time, and I haven't been shut out this season even though I have yet to hear from a bunch of schools!

[lyellgeo]

People above make good points, but I think it's more of a structural problem with the (American flavored) intensity of competition rather than with the GRE itself.

Is the GRE probably not the best indicator of success in graduate school? Yes

Are many of the other components of the application--inflated letters, grades, and so on--also not necessarily the best indicators of success? Yes

Unfortunately we live in a seller's market where programs have every incentive to add unnecessary components to the application in order to cut down the number of applicants, even if those components are only marginally helpful.

It's one of the reasons I feel the U.S. education system is structurally flawed at a much deeper level. Rather than have a system where students can pay relatively little (say, under 2k per year, following the model in better EU countries) a semester to pursue a MA program before deciding whether the phd is for them, we force well-meaning, often naive students to i) apply for phds programs with 4% or less acceptance rates (even at unranked programs), ii) take out student loans for 20k or more per year at an unfunded MA (leaving aside the handful of good MA programs that are completely funded, like GSU--the same programs which are also becoming more competitive to get into), or iii) rely on their parent's wealth to carry them through the process, already exacerbating the economic inequality problem in graduate education--that's all without even mentioning the ever increasing costs of undergraduate education (especially when it comes to going to undergrad programs which can give you the background and expertise needed to pursue graduate education in the first place). And, in the end, even if one does get into a good phd program, you're still getting way underpaid for the amount of work you're doing, and in a situation with huge psychological pressure to succeed AND absolutely no guarantee of a job at the end. 

So sure, the GRE is a private company that uses its monopolistic position to exploit students, but that's basically true of the system on the whole. Which is not to say that one can't be happy while pursuing graduate education, but it's at least helpful to be aware of the structural problems before pointing out minor injustices with the application process. 



 

 

Edited February 9, 2018 by lyellgeo

[bridgephil]

Yeah so I know there are some really dumb incentives to value the GRE, like fellowships and all that. And I know that most philosophers don't care too much about GRE scores. I suppose my big gripe is that there are a sizable minority of (mostly analytic) philosophers who do care about the GRE scores. In certain cases, I've heard of people who regularly work on admissions committees taking poor GRE Q or VR scores to basically discredit a good writing sample (the idea being that the student might have gotten help on the writing sample, whereas their GRE scores somehow reveal their true, raw potential), which personally I think is a load of crap. 

Anyway, on kretschmar's point about the scores showing that someone is dedicated to being a good applicant, I can see what you mean, but I don't really think it makes valuing the GRE scores - in particular the quant - any less arbitrary. Most of us philosophy people probably have decently large working vocabularies and can spare a couple hours to study vocab or practice writing under a time limit. But for a lot of us, myself included, doing well on the Q section would have basically meant spending 3-5 hours a week studying math tricks for an entire semester, which seems like it *shouldn't* be necessary, even though it currently kind of is.

I agree with everyone's points about the system being screwed up. I spent $30 on a test prep book,  $200 (?) to take the GRE, and then $27 to send the scores to each school. And then there were the application fees. Applying to grad school really adds up. 

Also, the schools I applied to are mostly analytic, and I'm looking to study some very lemmy type stuff, so my Q scores might be more important for me getting admitted than people who applied to continental programs, but it is always nice to hear success stories from people with Q scores like mine! God, this week has been so slow.

[poppypascal]

9 hours ago, lyellgeo said:

So sure, the GRE is a private company that uses its monopolistic position to exploit students, but that's basically true of the system on the whole. Which is not to say that one can't be happy while pursuing graduate education, but it's at least helpful to be aware of the structural problems before pointing out minor injustices with the application process. 

True, it would be great to reform the whole system. Making public schools tuition free would already put some downward pressure on private fees. I think there should also be caps on private tuition costs, and stricter regulation of the student loan market, so that colleges can't just raise fees ad infinitum knowing full well the loans will be there to cover it. 

But the GRE (and SAT for that matter) is exceptionally egregious in my view. You always (in theory, anyway) have the option of going to a public college or a cheaper private college. So it's not such a blatant monopoly. Standardized testing is essentially monopolistic. The whole point of it is having a unique standard by which to compare people. It's so strange that this would be a private test anyway. We have a huge public school system, tens of thousands of teachers educating kids throughout their childhood and adolescence, and yet somehow that same system can't produce a general test that every student takes to graduate high school? The UK has A levels, France has the baccalaureate etc... These are detailed tests where students actually have to formulate nuanced answers to questions about things like history, philosophy, geography, literature... Why can't the US have something similar? And if we're so attached to the multiple choice model, why can't the government administer it?

The most maddening aspect of the GRE for me was paying to have my results sent to each school. You're clearly paying 30 dollars to have a computer send an email with your results. It's almost certainly an automated process. Total rip off.

Edited February 9, 2018 by poppypascal

[Scoots]

On 2/8/2018 at 3:00 PM, Neither Here Nor There said:

Really, it just sucks. It should go away. And gosh, damn it, if it shuts me out. I understand perfectly why it would shut me out. If the application pool is 250, and they have 5 spots, why would they choose the person with the low GRE? But if we eliminated the test and instead asked for things that really help our success (like language skills), I think that would be a much better way to narrow down applicants.

That’s a rather scary picture you paint of admissions. 

Prof A: We have 250 applicants. 249 have glowing recommendations. Of them, 240 have excellent writing samples. So what do we do now, Prof B?

Prof B: Darts. 

Prof A: How about horoscopes.

Prof B: Or the GRE.

Prof A: And don’t forget the US News College Rankings. 

[ThePeon]

4 hours ago, Scoots said:

That’s a rather scary picture you paint of admissions. 

Prof A: We have 250 applicants. 249 have glowing recommendations. Of them, 240 have excellent writing samples. So what do we do now, Prof B?

Prof B: Darts. 

Prof A: How about horoscopes.

Prof B: Or the GRE.

Prof A: And don’t forget the US News College Rankings. 

It's not that extreme, I've heard some Professors say that there are probably about 40-50 qualified applicants per round. Still, when schools only give out 10-20 acceptance/wait-list spots, that means committees are making a lot of difficult and probably somewhat (at least from the outside perspective) random and arbitrary decisions.