GRE Scores of international applicants

[juturnas]

Hi,

I am an international applicant to Sociology Ph.D. programs in the US. I applied to several top-ranking departments with GRE scores of V550 Q770 W4.0. Having read the grad cafe forums, now I am stressed about my scores. Can someone please evaluate my GRE scores and tell me whether they are insufficient for getting admitted to good soc. departments. Do you think that it makes a difference to come from a non-english speaking country in terms of evaluation of GRE scores.

Thanks for your comments

[Tritonetelephone]

Ignore the polls on this site - they are not representative. The GRE Powerprep software has graphs of the distribution of scores for each discipline, and sociology is noticeably lower than most.

Here's a table of score distributions: ftp://ftp.ets.org/pub/gre/generaldistribution.pdf

Sociology is on page 7.

Mean Verbal score: 483

Mean Quant score: 536

Mean AW score: 4.5

One of my profs/advisers (recent Stanford grad) suggested that a 600V and 700Q is "good" for sociology, so that's what I aimed for. Your scores are fine. But of course, GRE scores will only get your foot in the door, at best. In our field, program fit is huge. Research experience is a big plus, too.

If I were on an adcom, I would take English proficiency into account... is your TOEFL score decent? (not that I know a thing about TOEFL)

[waisee]

Hi juturnas,

I think tritonetelephone pretty much nailed the issue for you: "GRE scores will only get your foot in the door, at best. In our field, program fit is huge. Research experience is a big plus, too."

I get the feel that most adcoms would be less particular about the verbal and AW section of your GREs if your TOEFL is up to scratch with the graduate school requirements. For a student from a country where English is not the first language of instruction, it would be unrealistic for adcoms to expect stellar scores on English language tests of any kind.

What would matter more in your case, I guess, would be your personal biography of research/work experience, LORs and the impression that you are a fantastic fit with the department (this is conveyed through your SOP). If you have highlighted these in your applications, you should do fine. But seeing how competitive it is this year, and how admission decisions are based on a myriad of criterion beyond just test scores, my guess is as good as anyone else's. :|

If this comforts you in any way, I am an international applicant as well, and these are some issues I had to deal with too. :wink:

[juturnas]

hi guys,

thanks a lot.. I feel a little releived than before.. I guess it is a time to wait and feel stressed in general

thanks again

good luck with applications

[slothy]

Although your verbal and AW scores are a bit on the low side for most of the top-15 programs, your Q score is extremely strong for sociology - and I would say that Q is by far the most important section. I wouldn't worry about your scores so long as you did a decent job of proving your writing skills in your SOP and writing sample, unless your SOP was narrowly focused on a desire to do qualitative ethnographies of Mongolian goat-herders or something like that.

[misterpat]

Although your verbal and AW scores are a bit on the low side for most of the top-15 programs, your Q score is extremely strong for sociology -

Fact.

and I would say that Q is by far the most important section.

:?:

I wouldn't worry about your scores so long as you did a decent job of proving your writing skills in your SOP and writing sample, unless your SOP was narrowly focused on a desire to do qualitative ethnographies of Mongolian goat-herders or something like that.

I would definitely say that the OP is fine. A lot of departments claim that they are more lenient about GREs for Intl applicants, and I would imagine that even those that don't explicitly make that claim realize that the test is a LOT harder if you aren't a native English speaker. I'd hate to see what I'd score on a GRE I took in, say, German.

I had plenty of TAs during undergrad who could barely formulate a sentence in English. I wasn't at a top 15 school, but I imagine that if your other credentials are in order, your test scores won't kill you.

And that really is an outstanding Quantitative score. That alone might assuage any doubts your scores in the other two sections raised.

[Tritonetelephone]

Fact.

:?:

Lol. I 100% agree with misterpat.

[slothy]

To further explain my assertion that quantitative is the most important section, I base that on conversations I had with a couple program reps who told me that with the demise of the "real" analytical section, the quantitative section is the only part of the test that truly measures logical reasoning skills without the limitation of the size of your vocabulary. This is partly because the verbal and AW sections aren't considered all that valuable anymore - people are catching onto how capriciously the AW section can be graded (most grad school writing isn't 5-paragraph essays), and the verbal section focuses far too much on vocab. Anyone who graduated from high school should have had some exposure to GRE level math (and it can easily be reviewed), so there's (at least a perception of) less advantage for those who invested in Kaplan courses, came from fancy private schools or had time to invest in hundreds of hours of independent studying. Specifically, I think it was someone from Cornell Soc that said breaking 700 was really important to them. Also Q is an important indicator of whether you're likely to succeed in your first year methods sequence (even if statistics isn't true math), which has a lot of implications for how likely you are to succeed/finish - you really need to be able to master linear regression to be a professional sociologist, even if just to be able to understand what's being published in the field (if you're one of the few sociologists doing strictly qualitative work). Sure, a big vocabulary is nice to have sometimes, but it doesn't really translate into an aptitude for original research.

[Tritonetelephone]

Based on that, I guess I would argue that quantitative is the most valid... so maybe the most critically examined... which would make it the most important. Ok, nevermind.

You are absolutely right that we'll need to master linear regression before finishing our PhD's... that's why I already took a doc stats course at my UG univ, and did very well in it. And my Q GRE score isn't nearly as stellar as juturnas. So maybe that would knock another point of the "validity" scale for adcoms?

[samoth]

I'm worried about the same thing. I have 680 on the quantitative, but I did very well in methods and statistics courses and took advanced courses in regression methods. I understood from several faculty members that as long as your score isn't abnormally low then the courses you took will make a big difference.

[Tritonetelephone]

I'm worried about the same thing. I have 680 on the quantitative, but I did very well in methods and statistics courses and took advanced courses in regression methods. I understood from several faculty members that as long as your score isn't abnormally low then the courses you took will make a big difference.

Oh, absolutely!

I took the stats course because my adviser said that even in his Stanford cohort, soc students would do really well until they got to the upper-level stats - there they would fail and get kicked out of the program. So if you can prove that you've already survived it, that's a BIG plus to adcoms.