GRE score was terrible.

[Roll Right]

So I'm already in a masters...but I plan to move on to a PhD after I finish. I've heard that schools still look at GRE scores even if you have a masters, and then others have told me they won't even look at them. So I'm wonder...how much do they matter after a masters?? If I graduate with a 4.0 and a great quantitative MA thesis, could a low GRE still keep me out of the running? I was told by undergraduate professors that an MA is often a way to prove your worth beyond crappy GRE scores.

[digits2006]

How low is your GRE.. see I have a low GRE score...1100...but people on this forum think a low GRE score is a 1250. I'll take a 1250 any day of the year.

[Roll Right]

1050 or something... I can't remember, nor do I want to! The test infuriates me. How does it relate to sociology?! I work social stats just fine, I comprehend the readings very well...If a test that measures very little ability is going to keep me out of my chosen profession...well that's just an injustice. I've taken it twice. Both times corresponded with some pretty crappy events in my life. Three times on the test smacks of desperation. I don't want to take it again.

[Lauren the Librarian]

Three times on the test smacks of desperation. I don't want to take it again.

Ha! I took it 4 times! The first two scores were about the same. The third I improved my math, the fourth I got the Verbal score I needed. I taking the MA route because I'm not totally competetive now for a PhD, but I will be once I have my masters. Also, I plan on waiting 4.5 years to apply to a PhD program so my other low scores get dropped from my GRE record. heehee...

[captiv8ed]

1050 or something... I can't remember, nor do I want to! The test infuriates me. How does it relate to sociology?! I work social stats just fine, I comprehend the readings very well...If a test that measures very little ability is going to keep me out of my chosen profession...well that's just an injustice.

This has been my huge beef too! And sociologists know and teach about test biases, so why do they use it anyway?

[Roll Right]

Man I don't know. Sociology is my life. I want nothing else but to get a PhD. It's just what I've decided is my path in life. I guess, if it really is what I'm supposed to do, I won't let a test get in my way. So I'm working in a masters, preparing myself for whats next. If I can show PhD programs the love and passion I have for the discipline, I don't see how they could turn me away...but then again...who knows? Stupid test.

[jacib]

Man I don't know. Sociology is my life. I want nothing else but to get a PhD. It's just what I've decided is my path in life. I guess, if it really is what I'm supposed to do, I won't let a test get in my way. So I'm working in a masters, preparing myself for whats next. If I can show PhD programs the love and passion I have for the discipline, I don't see how they could turn me away...but then again...who knows? Stupid test.

Are both your sections roughly equal? My old man is a professor and emailed a bunch of his colleagues (at schools I'm not applying to) and got their takes on the GRE. It seems a low score in one section is not the end of the world. More quantitative programs (especially ones with a big demography element) tend to want higher scores. Private schools seem to emphasize scores more than public ones (I posted some of the exact things they sent my father in a few other places so I won't waste space reposting them). Some schools are known for emphasizing the score more than others: one school in particular was brought up twice. However, even at that private top 25 school, the guy who emailed my father (he's actually a close friend of my father's--they bunk together at conferences, how cute is that!) told him that though they generally want scores higher than 620-630, they do make exceptions if there is something else outstanding. For example, they accepted a girl with lower scores who won some award for her undergrad thesis. A 4.0 Master's grad would hopefully be that kind of outstanding thing for some schools at least. You just need one school to take a close look at you, luckily.

If not, study harder. Take lots of practice tests. Try to get feedback if it was just your score that killed you. Three times smacks of commitment. Especially if you already have an MA showing high level work. I would guess with enough studying you can improve dramatically. If you're starting to get a bunch of rejections, PM me and I'll give you a bunch of study strategies (I tutor SAT/TOEFL/GRE/GMAT right now). It'll send me an email and I'll try to get back to you even if I've generally stopped using the boards in general.

[Roll Right]

Well I'm applying next year. I'm designing a thesis that studies religiosity, and I'm applying to all the big schools in the south that study religion in a sociological perspective. Basically, I'm doing everything I can to make myself marketable...presenting at conferences, emailing professors at prospective schools, looking into the research of those professors...including it in my thesis, trying to work on publishable pieces with my own professors. These are all things I see as speaking louder than GRE scores.

[jacib]

Well I'm applying next year. I'm designing a thesis that studies religiosity, and I'm applying to all the big schools in the south that study religion in a sociological perspective. Basically, I'm doing everything I can to make myself marketable...presenting at conferences, emailing professors at prospective schools, looking into the research of those professors...including it in my thesis, trying to work on publishable pieces with my own professors. These are all things I see as speaking louder than GRE scores.

Yeah dude, I agree with you, those things will all make your application much stronger than mine... provided you make the initial cut. I'd really recommend retaking the exam and studying, if you have time. If you don't have time, I'd recommend making time, honestly. It sounds like you're prepared and would make an excellent sociologist, so it would be horrible for them not to give your application a proper look. Start learning words. Get the official ETS book full of tons of old paper test questions. Make dumb flash cards. Use Barron's (it's particularly long and difficult) word list. Organize the words into groups so that slander-libel-calumniate etc. all have the same meaning your head, and that this meaning has an antonym in laud-extol-panegyrize. Study like a nerd. Every time you see an unknown word, look it up, make a flash card for it. Relearn triangles. Take so many practice tests in a silent control envirnoments that you go crazy. Study what you get wrong. Learn when to guess the word you don't know. Learn to eliminate choices well. Learn what ETS thinks is the main idea of a passage. Your school probably has GRE prep books in its library or study center, get ones with CDs and copy the CDs and take the electronic tests in addition to the official ETS book.

I studied actively for about two months and the last two weeks I just didn't do anything but study. I woke up at 7 every day to get my body adjusted I improved my score by more than 100 points. Probably closer to 150. 1200, a 150 point improvement for you, is enough to get you passed probably any arbitrary cut off.

Where are you looking at specifically? I had a big problem finding people who study religion. I ended up with five schools, but finding five programs that were a decent fit, but no one could suggest schools beyond those four (the fifth I actually emphasized the political aspects of the project). It's a really not in demand subfield, especially in terms of hiring. The advice I got was if you do study sociology of religion, make sure you pass qualifiers in another subfield too (like political sociology, urban sociology, comparative/historical sociology, methods, theory, whatever) so that you can better present yourself as someone prepared to teach a variety of undergrad classes.

[Roll Right]

I'm focusing on stratification as well, which is a big component to my thesis. Other subfields are identity formation and sociology of violence and terrorism. Soc of religion is actually about to blow up. There's a large phenomenology movement wanting to give credence to the transcendental experience. It's pretty interesting. This is going on in a lot of sciences...physics most notably.

[jacib]

I'm focusing on stratification as well, which is a big component to my thesis. Other subfields are identity formation and sociology of violence and terrorism. Soc of religion is actually about to blow up. There's a large phenomenology movement wanting to give credence to the transcendental experience. It's pretty interesting. This is going on in a lot of sciences...physics most notably.

Yeah Social Strat will do you well! I went in saying "Religion, Religion, Religion" and my dad looked at my statement and was basically like "You need to add other subfields too..." He told me that they recently hired a Sociologist of Religion in his department, and though that's her main research interest, they could only hire her cause she could teach the methods classes and perhaps some sociology of culture (where they were weak I guess). She could also teach something else--exactly what I forget. Social networks? I hard that's going to be hot soon. Man, I wish religion were about to blow up! But I feel like it's one of those things that people are always saying. Especially about some breakthrough between religion and science. Hey remember how in the 70's the world was going to be totally secularized by now?

I found it really hard to do find someone to supervise my project! Are you finding the same thing? Granted, I started my Sociology Department search late, but all that people could suggest was the same four departments over and over (I ended up applying to a fifth and reworking my statement to be much more political sociology). But since we need sociology of religion + _______ (insert other thing here), I had a hard time finding a department with good religion and good politics!

Anyway, email the DGSs at place you want to go and ask if they happen to know the average GRE scores, and what kind of score the "typical candidate" has. Tell them your scores and that you're concerned, because otherwise you're a strong candidate. They'll probably tell you if you need to retake. Maybe wait a month or two until they're done with the current batch.

Edited January 18, 2010 by jacib

[captiv8ed]

I am focusing towards sociology of religion and I found three depts that were super excited about me. Another one was pretty excited. I didn't contact anyone in the other three.

[jacib]

I am focusing towards sociology of religion and I found three depts that were super excited about me. Another one was pretty excited. I didn't contact anyone in the other three.

Man, from a cursory glance, I can say that I should have applied to Washington! It wouldn't have been a perfect fit for me, but Susan Pitchford, Daniel Chirot, and Michael Hechter all seem interesting (especially the last two, though I guess the comparative/nationalism stuff draws me to the program as much as the religion)... and I didn't even check out the other schools you mentioned. Hopefully, I won't have to next year, if you know what I mean. I'm happy with where I applied.

[solairne]

I've read (at least for Linguistics) that the GRE is very unimportant. Half of the schools I've applied to don't require it and one of the schools I was considering in California (I'm not sure if it was Stanford, UCLA, or Berkeley) flat out told me in an email that even though it is required, they don't really care much about it unless it is just obscenely low.

From what I've been able to discern, they are much more concerned with your writing sample and LOR than with your GRE. Certainly if you are denied across the board this round, raising your GPA would be something you could do to better your candidacy for next round, but I don't think it is make it or break it.

[captiv8ed]

Ha! Washington wasn't even one of the schools I got in touch with. I have a professional relationship with a very well known professor there and met with her, but otherwise, I didn't send out fit emails.

[ColorlessGreen]

The problem with low GRE scores is that it is often a "red flag" for many AdComs. The thing is that grading is so varied among different schools that a 4.0 cum GPA at one school might only be a 2.5 GPA or something at another school. The GRE is the "great equalizer" that offers schools a chance to compares candidates on a more level basis. It is such a generic test of verbal and quantitative ability that I believe no serious candidate to grad school should have an excuse for doing poorly on the test. If you want to prove you are motivated to a grad school, then you really need to put in the time and effort to study for the GRE and do well.

You must realize, though, that not everyone can be in the upper percentiles, due to the very nature of the GRE. That doesn't mean they're not qualified for grad school, it just means that there are people out there who have done better on a test that is, as you mentioned, quite generic, and ultimately unrelated to success in one's own field.

[Roll Right]

Well, I'm actually in a graduate masters program right now, with a 4.0 and a completely quantitative thesis. I did very poorly on the GRE, yet I'm top of my class. I'd be curious to see a study that proved a correlation between GRE success and graduate school success. And I did take the time to study. I studied for an entire semester.

I think it's refreshing that a lot of programs are informally waiving the GRE requirement as well. It's kind of an outdated, fossil of a test. I'm not sure why it's still required, as its technologically behind the times, and barely conforms to a high school curriculum. The math may be high school textbook, but the english section surely isn't. The changes I've seen for the future test are refreshing at least.

Edited January 20, 2010 by Roll Right

[Roll Right]

"Thorndike and Hagen (1959), for instance, obtained 12,000 correlations between aptitude test scores and various measures of later occupational success on over 10,000 respondents and concluded that the number of significant correlations did not exceed what would be expected by chance. In other words, the tests were invalid... Holland and Richards (1965) and Elton and Shevel (1969) have shown that no consistent relationships exist between scholastic aptitude test scores in college students and their actual accomplishments in social leadership, the arts, science, music, writing, and speech and drama."

-David McClelland, "Testing for Competence rather than Intelligence", appearing in The IQ Controversy, edited by Block and Dworken (Pantheon Books, 1976), page 49.

^{"Clark and Centra studied two samples of doctoral recipients… The resulting sample consisted of 239 chemists, 142 historians, and 221 psychologists, all of whom had at least one GRE score. In chemistry, the correlation of number of articles and book chapters with GRE-verbal was -.02; with GRE-quantitative it was -.01; and with GRE-advanced it was .15… For all historians, these correlations were -.24, -.14, and .00. For all psychologists, the correlations were -.05, -.02, and .02. Clark and Centra also examined the distribution of number of publications by GRE scores. The distributions were essentially flat, with no particular trend. In fact, the largest number of publications was reported by the lowest scoring groups in all three fields(emphasis added)."}

^{- Leonard L. Baird, "Do Grades and Tests Predict Adult Accomplishment?" Research in Higher Education 23, no. 1, 1985, page 25.}

^{Theres some evidence to the contrary.}

Edited January 20, 2010 by Roll Right

[Early]

I'm also interested in the sociology of religion. Sounds like you're taking a similar path that I took. I did get into an MA program with about an 1100. Went through in 3 semesters, but over that time I tried to do all those things you talked about. I did the conferences, worked on anything I could get my hands on, even submitted a paper for publication recently. Unfortunately, I still felt a bit insecure about my GRE considering my less than stellar undergraduate career. So on a whim I took it again in August before starting applications. I actually did much better. I would say keep trying to bolster your CV but it you have a whole year still, you might as well try to improve that score just so you don't worry about it.

We should start a religion discussion on the sociology subforum.

[Roll Right]

Most definitely, kick it off and I'll post.

Edited January 21, 2010 by Roll Right

[katalytik]

It does not matter how any individual applicant views the GRE. The point is that the majority of Admissions Committees still use the GRE as a general gauge of aptitude for graduate level studies. Even if YOU think it is dumb, pointless, and uncorrelated with graduate school success, the only thing that really matters is how much weight each respective AdCom puts on the GRE. Most top schools, in fact, DO factor in GRE scores in deciding whether to admit or reject an applicant (even if it is just to make sure the average scores of admitted applicants appears very competitive). Of course there are outliers i.e. those who perform well below average on one or both parts on the GRE and still manage to get into decent schools, but for the vast majority of applicants it is still a relatively important component of one's application that should not be ignored.

Sure you can cite ambiguous studies of how the GRE is actually negatively correlated (laughable) with graduate school success, but at the end of the day you still have to convince Harvard, Berkeley, or Stanford to somehow look past that < 1200 GRE score and let you in.

Agreed. I think the reality is as you said. Fighting the system is not the way to go.........I think taking advantage of the system is the way to go. The GRE is something people can study for. Yes not everyone scores high, but you would be surprised at how much a person can improve from studying. I think the committees need a way to equalize all students coming from schools all over the place. If a person was on an admission committee, how would you compare an international student with a US student from some unknown school? Its near impossible if both get good recommendations, have done well at their school, and have written solid essays etc. I'm not saying the GRE is the only thing they use, but at least they can reliably try to compare scores. If its minor (20-50 points for example) is not a real difference. But what if its over 100-150 points different? Its not something some people will agree with, but when you have a few openings with a ton of applicants, there has to be some way to start telling them apart. GRE is only one mechanism they use.

[red_crayons]

I wonder if I'd want to go to a school where the professors advising me were more interested in a single numerical score than the research ideas I explain in my SOP/writing sample/personal conversations.

That's how I feel about all grades, despite going to a very grade-conscious undergrad school. I learned a LOT in organic chem, despite getting a C. It helped me get a lot of As in upper level biology courses with average effort, while the people who aced chem by cramming were still cramming their way through biochem a year later.

However, I know scores and grades matter to a lot of people, and that's fine. I'm not super duper ambitious and aiming to be a star academic (although I'll go that route if it presents itself!), AND I'm probably too cynical for my own good...

[NeuroNerd86]

Seadub, you would've had an interesting discussion with one of my recommenders who turns white with rage the second somebody brings up the importance of grades and score in graduate school admission.

[Roll Right]

Actually, if you look at the numbers, women aren't paid significantly less for the same work. The numbers are about equal now. A lot of people might get mad at me for saying it, but believe me...I didn't believe it at first either.

This thread really needs to go away.

[gollux]

as far as i can tell, this seadub character lives to rove around grad cafe looking for people who are fretting about their weaknesses, solely to belittle them and make general bootstrap-related commentary. it's weird. this is a forum for anxious applicants, not an ayn rand fan site. yeesh.