Low quant GRE score sinker for Northwestern?

[AA24L]

Hey All,

I took the old GRE last winter, did well in the Verbal (690), but kind of bombed Quant (650 or like 59%). I plan is to do political theory and IR, and Northwestern seems to have a great theory department. I also have an interest in developing stronger quant skills while pursuing a Ph.D but it's kind of a secondary interest. I'm just wondering if I should retake the GRE and try to get the 650 to 700 or if I shouldn't worry myself. A stronger score is clearly more competitive but I'm not sure if taking the test is really necessary.

Thanks!

[Jwnich1]

Hi AA24L,

I'm in a very similar situation. Looking at IR/Methodology but have a similar GRE Quant score. The impression I've gotten from my undergrad professors is that the GRE is becoming a less valuable tool every year, and that a good number of schools are treating it as a rough first filter (i.e. you combined score hits or exceeds some arbitrary cutoff and you need not worry, otherwise the rest of your app may need to "make up for it" somehow.) The bottom line is that not many schools will reject you on the GRE alone, and if they did (or accepted you on the same basis), would you want to go there anyway?

Best of luck,

Justin

[Penelope Higgins]

Northwestern is incredibly popular these days and they reject more than 90% of applications. If you're emphasizing in your application that you want to do quant stuff in addition to theory, I'd be a bit nervous with that score. I'd be a bit nervous about telling the Northwestern theorists you wanted to take quant work seriously in general, but that's a different story. So long as you're not putting all your eggs in the Northwestern basket, though, you should be fine since your test scores are strong enough to get your file consideration lots of other places.

[gradcafe26]

Northwestern is incredibly popular these days and they reject more than 90% of applications. If you're emphasizing in your application that you want to do quant stuff in addition to theory, I'd be a bit nervous with that score. I'd be a bit nervous about telling the Northwestern theorists you wanted to take quant work seriously in general, but that's a different story. So long as you're not putting all your eggs in the Northwestern basket, though, you should be fine since your test scores are strong enough to get your file consideration lots of other places.

Penelope Higgins, speaking of popularity, what do you think of the NRC ranking system? I was surprised to see a lot of schools within the top 30 range are not that well known. For instance, the rankings of Indiana, UIUC and Arizona are all higher than that of Wisconsin-Madison. If this ranking system is reliable, would it be a good strategy to apply to those with high quality (based on NRC ranking) but relatively low popularity?

Of course, there are other more important aspects to take into consideration like fit and subfield strength, and the nrc ranking is based on stats from a few years ago.

http://graduate-school.phds.org/rankings/political-science/rank/__M_____________________________________________________________U

[Penelope Higgins]

Speaking as someone who teaches in a department treated surprisingly well by the NRC, I think it is a load of crap. Most of the measures of research productivity don't really capture anything meaningful, the data is old, and besides placement in jobs after you graduate is, whether we like it or not, still largely driven by networks and reputations rather than objective measures of something like "quality of degree." To take your example (and someone may correct me here) I can't think of a single subfield in which I would choose any of the schools you listed over Madison.*

* I've got no connection to Madison at all - this comment purely reflects my sense of the department's strength.

[AA24L]

Thanks for the responses!

My advisor really suggested Northwestern's theory department given its strength in democratic and critical theory. I actually put a decent amount of eggs in the Northwestern basket though. I thought I'd have a pretty good shot at Northwestern given that its ranked (relatively) lower by USA news and the NRC, but was really encouraged by a study I found that showed that compared to top 15 programs, Northwestern placed PhDs phenomenally well.

Any suggestions of other theory departments where you guys think I'd have more than a random change getting in (i.e not Harvard, Yale) but have really strong and really well respected programs. For a while I was thinking New School, but although the theory looks strong, it doesn't seem like getting a PhD there leads to many opportunities. I was also thinking Chicago, but apparently all their theorists jumped ship to Northwester lol

Link to the study here: http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2007/08/21/ranking