International students - Is the application revised differently?

[litalchart]

Hello,

I'm currently a Masters student in biochemistry and molecular biology studying in Israel at the Hebrew university and I want to apply for PhD studies in USA for fall 2013.

My GPA is very high (I don't really know how to translate it from the 0-100 range to the 0-4.0 range). I have a lot of experience working in the lab (obviously, because Im doing my masters) and I will have very strong recommendation letters (from my PI, from the PI with whom I worked in a summer internship in Cold Spring Harbor labs).

I took the GRE less than a week ago and my scores are:

V: 154 (65%)

Q: 159 (85%)

W: still don't know.

As you can see, my verbal score is not very high. On the other hand, I'm not an english native speaker and I still have to take the TOEFL exam. What I wanted to know is if the reviewers take my nationality into account? Do they expect not english speakers to have lower scores? I just don't know if I should retake the test!

I'll appreciate your help!

[orangeMan]

I don't think anyone can help you with your query. Best to find and ask current students from your country.

[ringo-ring]

As far as I know, score in Verbal doesn't matter at all unless you apply in Humanities.

[Eigen]

Verbal matters. Written communication is still quite important in the sciences. It doesn't matter as much as quant, but it certainly carries some weight.

[emmm]

But it might be good enough -- see if any of the schools you are interested in , or others at a similar level of selectivity, publish their average GRE scores. I think Duke and UW have this info available online.

[Eigen]

But it might be good enough -- see if any of the schools you are interested in , or others at a similar level of selectivity, publish their average GRE scores. I think Duke and UW have this info available online.

It's a good idea. I was mostly just responding to ringo's assertion that verbal didn't matter at all outside of the humanities.

[litalchart]

Thanks for the help!

[Eigen]

It's a good idea. I was mostly just responding to ringo's assertion that verbal didn't matter at all outside of the humanities.

Heh, someone doesn't like me saying that verbal actually matters in the sciences...

[chaetzli]

Hi,

I am an international student who holds a Master's degree from a program that is taught in English. It took both tests, the GRE and TOEFL, for my grad school applications. While I got a very high TOEFL score (114 iBT), I performed very badly on the verbal GRE (V: 151, Q: 159, AW: 4). Do you think that the TOEFL score can offset the verbal GRE score?

Thank you very much for your response!

[emmm]

Verbal matters A LOT in the sciences -- you really need good reading and writing skills. I didn't think it was humanly possible to read this many journal articles ...

[MCS_aspirant]

Hi,

I am an international student who holds a Master's degree from a program that is taught in English. It took both tests, the GRE and TOEFL, for my grad school applications. While I got a very high TOEFL score (114 iBT), I performed very badly on the verbal GRE (V: 151, Q: 159, AW: 4). Do you think that the TOEFL score can offset the verbal GRE score?

Thank you very much for your response!

I am also an international student, but did my undergrad in the USA. I know for a fact that most universities weigh the GREs of international students on a different scale (after researching many universities' websites). I am pretty sure your TOEFL score will at least work as an evidence that you can speak English.

To answer the original question, I would reassert what some other people have said. Verbal score doesn't matter (outside humanities) even though a horrible score can hurt. As long as you are above a certain threshold (500ish in the old GRE), you are fine.

Verbal matters A LOT in the sciences -- you really need good reading and writing skills. I didn't think it was humanly possible to read this many journal articles ...

Verbal matters a lot, but not "GRE Verbal". The words that are thrown out in the GRE will never show up in any scholarly article (at least not in engineering or science).

Edited January 26, 2012 by MCS_aspirant

[Eigen]

Verbal matters a lot, but not "GRE Verbal". The words that are thrown out in the GRE will never show up in any scholarly article (at least not in engineering or science).

This is patently untrue. A lot of the top publications are quite verbose, and use a lot of the "unusual" vocabulary that you'll see on the GRE verbal. A lot of less common vocabulary words can be very precise in terms of meaning, which helps a lot when it comes to creating concise and non-repetitive writing in the sciences.

I got a 96-percentile on the verbal, and I got that primarily through reading articles, a lot of them in peer reviewed science and engineering journals. Now when I write articles, or co-write them, I find a lot of that vocabulary quite useful to draw on, as well as very common.

Heck, I even saw brobdingnagian used in a journal article a few weeks back.

Its also worth noting that a high verbal score was mentioned by the adcom when I applied as one of the things that made my application stand out, and definitely helped with admission.

And I will again re-assert, even though people don't seem to like hearing it, the verbal score does matter in the sciences and engineering.

Edited January 27, 2012 by Eigen

[kaykaykay]

This probably depends on the school and on the major. Several different professors told me that they evaluate international students on the same scale as native speakers (even the verbal score) . They told me that my 93% was a little low. They also said that TOEFL scores do not matter at all because everyone in consideration has an almost perfect score. It must depend on the school though because they got 700+ applications with several great international applicants. I imagine in science where research experience, and math knowledge matters a lot this might be different. In political science both Q and V matter a lot for different reasons. Of course there are always some applicants who manage to compensate for low scoes with other aspects of the application. However, do not underestimate the competition.

Edited January 27, 2012 by kalapocska

[chaetzli]

Thank you guys for your responses! I am grateful for any feedback - no matter whether it is positive or negative!