Weight given to GRE sections across disciplines

[hopefulJD]

It seems to me like humanities programs like history and English clearly only care about the verbal score, whereas social sciences like sociology and political science give both sections equal weight. Is this accurate? If so, it does make sense given the focus of each discipline. I only ask because of personal curiosity as my interests lie across multiple disciplines and it might be useful to know how various departments will look at my scores. Not suggesting anyone should choose a discipline to go into based on the strengths of their GRE scores

Also, I've searched on these forums regarding how departments deal with multiple scores. Some schools take your highest, while others consider every score. The consensus seems to be that the most recent score is given the most weight, especially if there are multiple years in between the tests. Can anyone provide more insight? When the highest score is taken, is it from your highest in one sitting or highest from each section? Or does this change considerably from place to place as well? I have a feeling that nothing is concrete with grad school apps and everything is up in the air Ugh

[ThisSlumgullionIsSoVapid]

From what I have observed during my admissions and what I have gathered from e-mailing professors (and speaking with my professors) is they take the highest total score. That is, the highest total exam. I haven't seen any program that combines scores during my application process. Also, sociology pays respect to both Q and V. I've heard from some that certain programs would be more impressed by a higher score in Q than V but nonetheless they don't ignore either one; both quant and verbal are equally important. Also, it doesn't really matter how long is between the tests; they won't take the most recent because scores are equally useful as long as they are within 5 years of your application date.

"Does it make sense". Well, for sociology it makes sense that you would need to be decent in both q and v. There is significant writing and there is also statistics and research. Sociology is like a blend of philosophy, humanities, the scientific method, and statistics.

Edited January 18, 2012 by ThisSlumgullionIsSoVapid

[ThisSlumgullionIsSoVapid]

Oh, and one professor I spoke with (because I retook my GRE too) told me that it would raise some eye brows if you did considerably worse on your re-take of the exam when it's obvious you were trying to improve over your first exam.

Ex. you got a 1100 on your first exam and then retake it and get a 980. The 1100 might get you into some departments while the 980 wouldn't. In situations where you would have been a lot better off just leaving your mediocre score instead of retaking it and getting an abysmal score wouldn't kill your applications but they would at least see that it happened.

[Supernovasky]

Question on this...

I got a 1240 on my GRE. Not great, not horrable. My math portion was better (in terms of percentile) than my verbal, but not by much.

However, my math GPA is high, with a litany of statistics and calculus classes (I believe I had a 3.6) going all the way up to DifEq.

So do you think that a proven success in math in college classes will outweigh a mediocre math score on the GRE?

[Chuck]

This thread on the CHE forum may be of interest here:

http://chronicle.com/forums/index.php/topic,84646.0.html

[hopefulJD]

Good to see others are having the same conversation lol I guess like the one poster said on there, the NRC rankings might be telling in that only the Q score of programs outside the humanities are given. As was said though, this makes sense for sociology, political science and such given the mathematical and statistical research that may need to be done in those fields. I suppose the Q section, though, is only glossed over for humanities.

[Blurry]

In philosophy (which is still generally, but not universally, considered a humanities) both the verbal and the quantitative score are given equal weight. It is not unusual in philosophy to see very high quantitative score, so a lower quant score would disadvantage you. However, I wanted to add, that these scores are interpreted differently depending what particular field you specialize in.

In analytic philosophy in general and logic, philosophy of mathematics, philof social sciences, general philof science, experimental philosophy etc., in particular, the quantitative score would be a more significant factor than it would be in continental philosophy. In fact, I imagine that in many fields in analytic philosophy the quantitative score would be more important than the verbal score.

In history, I also imagine that a historian of science or mathematics would need a high quantitative score not to raise any suspicion. So I would not say that the humanities do not care about the math component. In fact, someone specializing in logic within a philosophy department would have to show much more mathematical aptitude than nearly every social science (safe for economics where pure math skills are also important). Check this out: philosophy tends to outperfom most social sciences in quantitative and I think this makes sense given the demand for mathematical aptitude in analytic philosophy.

Edited January 20, 2012 by Blurry

[sciencegirl]

Aside from admissions, the GRE scores are sometimes important for fellowship/funding purposes... some programs need to send in their applicants to the graduate school at large for various fellowships that are in competition with students from other departments. A friend of mine with average GRE scores (in the 500s) still got into a top program (one of the top ten public schools), but didn't have any funding the first year (And found out later this was solely due to GRE scores).

It's really annoying to be honest, since we like to think that the GRE's aren't that important and some of the top programs even seem to downplay using them at all -- but they still have a way of coming into the mix in ways that can bite us.

In Sociology, I believe that both V and Q scores are looked at, with more emphasis on V, but you shouldn't bomb the Q.

[Darth.Vegan]

Honestly when are schools going to drop the GRE requirement? We are social scientists for goodness sake's! We know that doing well on a standardized test only means that you are good at taking standardized tests!

[socieconomist]

Honestly when are schools going to drop the GRE requirement? We are social scientists for goodness sake's! We know that doing well on a standardized test only means that you are good at taking standardized tests!

YES! I did so bad on quant section i might as well have guessed on nearly everything... wait scratch that... that's exactly what I did! lol - guess I'll know why if I don't get accepted... still - sociologists use spss or stata... who the hell out there is a sociologist studying fractions and geometry? the whole ST industry is a racket.

[sciencegirl]

honestly, i heard from a few people that it's often more a requirement imposed by the graduate school at large at many of the top universities for rankings and publicity purposes... if it were up to the sociology departments, many would probably do away with the scores. And apparently the scores are very important for funding. At some places, the centralized graduate school higher ups pressure the various departments to try and admit a certain GRE score median and mean of their incoming classes to keep their rankings at a certain level. The Sociology adcoms often have this love hate relationship with the GRE score requirements.

Basically, all of your points are true and the GRE's/standardized tests are terrible indicators of our success as sociologists, but some old guy trustee in a suit on an Ivy League corporation board doesn't really care. sucks to be us. I need to go to bed... its way too late for me to be up and to be spending time on this forum!

[sleepycat]

As someone who bombed the test three times, I hate the GRE and I hate how it plays so much in to the decisions. My problem is that my grades are also non-honors (although i went to a high ranked liberal arts school) so I am constantly freaked out that I am not going to get in anywhere. I think those two keep me from the top 20 and why I apply so low, but can't find any lower programs with things that I research in.

Edited January 29, 2012 by sleepycat