Philosophy GRE nonsense

[amstu]

Just took the garbage GRE and got a 160 on the verbal. I'm applying to Philosophy programs. One of my academic mentors told me that departments use them to simply filter the numbers down to something manageable. Does anyone in or around philosophy have any knowledge of GRE scores and cut-offs for Phil programs? 

 

[Duns Eith]

If you have a 160 or higher, you'll meet some effective cut-offs. Even if there is no score cutoff, there is nothing that prevents a department from dropping the lowest 30 or 50 percentile of applicants. (so what score becomes the cut-off would change each year) I would read the Admissions FAQ for any school that you're applying to, if they have one available. Some say "the average score is 162 for those offered admission", or say "the top applicants typically score above 162". Some departments stay silent for a reason.

Some departments treat it like a guesstimate, and care more about your combined score, with below 310 hurting you, and above 325 helping you, but 310-325 neither hurting nor helping.

Some departments really don't care about the GRE, but their grad college might impose limitations on funding packages or acceptance rates -- as if the adcoms need to justify why they are accepting an applicant who scored below avg for the pool. Because administrators only care about quant metrics?

Edited November 20, 2018 by Duns Eith

[dgswaim]

Apply to Penn. Our department isn't using GREs in admissions anymore, given they're objectively useless.

[UndergradDad]

The GRE can be helpful for students from lesser known schools to compete for a phd student spot. Although it is not always a main factor, it can play a part. Unfortunately an online perusal of the background of grad students at the better programs shows a very strong tilt towards undergrads from ivy league or top public unis. MA's can help if you want to add 2 years to your grad education (with a few programs allowing some transfer credits), but any additional leg up can help for the aforementioned undergrads. As to the merits of the GRE, that is a separate topic, but we use such tools as we are given.

[bluwe]

On 11/28/2018 at 5:03 PM, UndergradDad said:

As to the merits of the GRE, that is a separate topic, but we use such tools as we are given.

1

I mean, why not pick some other arbitrary metric to use rather than the GRE? It's useless and expensive. You could get better results if you flipped a coin for every application. There, I solved the problem. Now every department can cut half, and under this scheme, every applicant has .5 chance of making it past the arbitrary filter. So, while 50% of applicants are still victims of chance, and laziness on the part of departments reviewing applications, we can say that no person is treated differently based on this arbitrary filter. I suppose that's the proper way to treat applicants who are trying to compete, not just for PhD spots, but, by proxy, for a job in academia afterward. I suppose that is how we deserve our applications to be reviewed, even though nearly every application fee is just a blatant cash grab. $125 to Stanford for, what, a 3% chance of getting in? And on top of that, that 3% is not necessarily found through careful review of every applicant's file--it might be based on a useless test that the applicant took 0-5 years ago. Nothing against Stanford, by the way, it just has the most egregious application fee that I saw. 

Edited December 22, 2018 by bluwe

[The_Last_Thylacine]

4 hours ago, bluwe said:

 I suppose that is how we deserve our applications to be reviewed, even though nearly every application fee is just a blatant cash grab. $125 to Stanford for, what, a 3% chance of getting in? And on top of that, that 3% is not necessarily found through careful review of every applicant's file--it might be based on a useless test that the applicant took 0-5 years ago. Nothing against Stanford, by the way, it just has the most egregious application fee that I saw. 

https://graddiversity.stanford.edu/graduate-fee-waiver/school-based-waivers

They hand these out fairly generously, so I would recommend applying for them.