GRE in financial aid decisions

[Catria]

When I prepared for the general GRE, I told myself that some university-wide fellowships (say, UGF at Vanderbilt or Centennial at Princeton) would use GRE scores as a criterion for award. But how much truth is there to this, if any? And do anyone have any idea how much do general GRE scores count in the process of awarding such fellowships?

 

Perhaps I gave out erroneous information to some undergraduate who inquired about the use of GRE in saying that there were two uses of GRE scores by schools. First as a first cut: a soft cut, where one need an increasingly higher GPA (or better research experience) to compensate for ever-decreasing GRE scores, or a hard cut, where one is not considered until one reaches a certain threshold (and both types of GRE-based cuts exist). But I also told her that, if one makes it past that cut, they are also used to award financial aid, that is, university-wide fellowships.

 

Also, please feel free to move this to the bank if it is appropriate to do so.

[jujubea]

I was directly told by an adcom member that the GRE is a critical factor in determining eligibility for university-wide funding. The reasoning this person gave was that because it is university wide, and there are so many different fields getting thrown together for consideration, each with department-specific needs, it's too much to all take into unique consideration, so they have to go with more objective, quantifiable measures to make the cuts.

 

This person was very specific that this only applied to the big huge school-wide funding pools though, and that the process within any given department for awarding department-specific aid, is much more subjective and "human" of a process.