Curiosity

[Willows]

Obviously this is a hypothetical because we aren't adcoms:

When weeding out GRE scores, do you think they start by looking at your overall or do you think they look at each section individually?

Say you have someone pushing the 90 percentile for verbal, but suffering at or below the 50 for quant.

Do you think that carries more or less weight than the student who got 60-70 percentile in each section?

I'm retaking because of Q, but I'm mostly just curious in general.

Edited September 24, 2012 by Willows

[Darth.Vegan]

A lot of departments have cut offs for both Q & V sections, after the cut off, I don't think the GRE is nearly as meaningful.

[jacib]

It really depends not only on the school but on the individual on the committee. My old man is a professor and when I was applying, he asked his colleagues at top departments for advice about my GRE scores and got answers One school talked about "Score in high 600s and low 700s do more instant attention", one gave precise means for each category and then said, "Of course, what really matters is the writing sample and statement of purpose." One wanted the precentages to be a certain way (clearly guided by "feeling" if it's good or not), two gave precise numbers. As for one good and one bad score, one said, addressing you question directly, "Generally, it's a question of balancing one thing against the other [...] One low sore won't hurt; two low scores need to have something pretty outstanding to counter balance; a bad GRE and a less than stellar record will have a hard time, though we admitted one such person who won a prize for the best senior thesis." Since then I've developed my own senior colleagues, and I know one who emphasizes the GRE heavily ("With massive grade inflation, it's the only way you can objectively compare students across programs") and another faculty member who I'm sure barely glances at. As one of my dad's colleagues said, "I have found much to my dismay that recent admissions committees vary widely in how much they weight GRE's and sadly enough, individuals also vary." I think ultimately, that's what needs to be kept in mind the most. I feel I got in because the committee was just right for me my year, but I didn't get in to lower ranked schools where I was equally well qualified. The admissions process is a lot more stochastic than we are comfortable admitting, I think.

On a similar note, one of my favorite academic bloggers, Chris Blattman (economist looking at violence in a poli sci department), has a recent post about grade inflation at schools. The relevant bit is:

Well, [for] grad schools and some grant competitions [GPA will matter]. Here students who come from schools with lower GPAs probably have a slight disadvantage. All the times I have sat on admissions committees, I haven’t a clue whether a school is inflated or not. There are too many. And we do look at GPA. But because I know there is heterogeneity I don’t take it too seriously, which is why I think the advantage is narrow.

I know my dad tries to know, when he does admissions, exactly which schools are inflated and which ones aren't. Likewise, with the GRE, I know some people who will argue "What the GRE is testing is arbitrary and unrelated to the work of being a sociologist, I don't take it too seriously once we're over department/university minimums," and some people who will argue, "Because of the heterogenity in GPA, we need to take GRE very seriously." It really depends on who you get on your committee. I agree with xdarthveganx that a lot of schools are only looking for minimums, but some I bet some schools do look for excellence in one category; this is especially imaginable if admissions are very political decisions by different factions in the department (demographers need high Q, but V is less important; ethnographers need high V, but Q is less important). In some cases (like my case at the school that admitted me, I believe), a higher GRE will get you looked at more quickly. But overall, because of the capriciousness of individual whim, it would be impossible to give any accurate hard and fast notion of how any of the quantitative aspects of the application will be looked at.

[AaronM]

capricious, good gre word jacib!

Stuff like this is really tough to answer. At ASA I talked to a few professors about admission and all the consensus was "It's a really irrational process." I do think, however, that they look at sections individually and weigh them that way. Like you said, a person who scored 90th on verbal and 50th on quant is fundamentally different than someone who scored 70th on both. I would reach out to grad students at schools that person is applying to to get a feel of what the individual departments actually look at.

[Willows]

I am loving all the opinions and insight! Thanks you guys. I have read some of your posts before, jacib! Particularly in regards to the admission process, they have all been very interesting and enlightening.

I've been scouring the site for a while now reading up on 2010/2011 cohorts and their stats. Of course, I'm not among those of you vying for top 10-20 programs. Still, competition has blossomed in recent years even in top 30-50 programs or so it would seem.

[gilbertrollins]

I'm 86th percentile verbal, 81st quant, and 96th analytical writing. Do you think those are low enough to get me department-secretary trashed at a top 10?

[Willows]

I'm 86th percentile verbal, 81st quant, and 96th analytical writing. Do you think those are low enough to get me department-secretary trashed at a top 10?

Those scores are almost 1400 if you use the conversion pdf on the ETS website. Your scores will not be trashed by the secretary, lol. Mine are around 1300, so definitely worse.

http://www.ets.org/s...information.pdf

Edited November 4, 2012 by Willows