<p>So the GRE allegedly measures how well you will do in grad school. They said the same thing about the ACT but I know for a fact that isn't true. I did terrible on the ACT and I currently have a 3.61 GPA at a top level state school (I'm a bio major). These tests in my opinion are only there to make money for the company that produces them and the tutoring companies. In your opinion, should they throw this test out the window?</p>
<p>The fact that it’s not a perfect predictor does not necessarily diminish its value as a statistical tool. It’s unfortunate from many students’ point of view, but… well, past performance is never a perfect predictor of future success anyway.</p>
<p>Take solace in the fact that the GRE isn’t that important for admissions.</p>
<p>It isn’t? How important is it really?</p>
<p>It’s not that important. However, some places have established cut-off’s. Now, the SUBJECT GRE is a different story.</p>
<p>For instance, if you were doing physics, the physics GRE is weighted pretty heavily and can keep you out of a lot of top programs. </p>
<p>The general GRE it depends where you’re applying to. For instance, I’m applying to biostatistics programs. On some of the school websites they explicitly state that they weight the quantitative portion significantly more. So, it doesn’t really matter all that much if a person is scoring like 600 on the verbal section (don’t know how it is on the new scale), but the averages for the quantitative portion for instance are like 790/800.</p>
<p>OOOOHHHHHHHHH you mean like SAT subject tests. Wow they even got that down packed. Well do you happen to know if they are important for P.A school?</p>
<p>Harvard even has a floor for its MPH program – 650 in math - below which they are concerned that the applicant would struggle in Stats and Epi.</p>
<p>
How did you do at statistics? You are an outlier - standardized tests don’t have a fantastic correlation with academic success, but they do correlate overall. The fact that some people with high scores will flunk out and some people with low scores will get honors only proves that the correlation is less than perfect.</p>
<p>
I don’t think so, because there is a little bit of utility in the tests. For example, while they cannot capture how well people perform with plenty of time, they do show how well people handle basic academic tests on their own with minimal time - this is why many schools in particular care about the quant portions of the tests, because it suggests real problems doing math that could result in problems mastering the material. Likewise, while a top score on the AW portion of the GRE is essentially meaningless, a sub-4.0 score suggests some real problems with writing at the graduate level that many professors may not consider worth the time to correct.</p>
<p>With the GRE there is an additional value - the ability to provide SOME consistent comparison between people in wildly different majors! Different schools use different GPA systems, some inflate grades, others don’t… for things like fellowships, schools like to have a way to differentiate between the students.</p>
<p>
Conventional wisdom is that it is the least important factor in admissions, and is really just used to eliminate students with bad scores - as I noted above, the assumption is that they will struggle without considerable help. This also means that really high scores will not help except in rare circumstances - for example, my wife was denied admission at one school because they really needed someone who had a high enough GRE to qualify for a fellowship, because the department was too broke to fund an RA or TA!</p>
<p>
PA degrees are not research programs, and do not usually require the GRE at all to the best of my knowledge - it is not really oriented towards these kinds of programs. I would be quite surprised if they required any subject GRE’s at all!</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>What qualifies as a bad score?</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>The GRE is required for PA schools. Idk about the subject GREs but please correct me on this if I’m wrong. </p>
<p>
</p>
<p>I got an A actually :p. But still it’s good to know that it isn’t important for admissions. I wish the same could be said for the MCATs</p>
<p>The weight put on quant vs. verbal depends heavily on what sort of program you’re applying to. A terrible quant score may not be a bar to a history graduate program, while a bad verbal score might not matter in a physics context.</p>
<p>I had a truly brutal 540 quant and had no problem being admitted to programs in my field: outdoor recreation/resource management.</p>
<p>They said the same thing about the ACT but I know for a fact that isn’t true. I did terrible on the ACT and I currently have a 3.61 GPA at a top level state school (I’m a bio major).</p>
<p>Take a class in statistics. Your singular experience doesn’t invalidate years of research on standardized tests. I have a lot of problems with them, but you can’t use your ONE example to invalidate all of the other results of standardized tests.</p>
<p>The tests don’t exist to “measure how well you will do in graduate school.” They exist to give professors some imperfect but still useful way to attempt to predict what your performance will be like. IIRC, GRE scores are significantly correlated with first-year graduate school GPA. There’s always going to be some error in those predictions due to other factors. I think that if they didn’t have any utility for professors, then graduate programs would stop using them. What interest do they have in making potential applicants spend $140 a pop, and then looking at the scores and spending the time necessary to keep up with new developments in them, if they didn’t find them useful?</p>
<p>I do think they have some utility. I do, for example, think that someone with below a 650 on the math portion <em>would</em> struggle with basic biostatistics and epi in a PH program. A 650 is the 48th percentile on the old exam, and that evidences a lack of basic math knowledge you’d need to get through those two classes.</p>
<p>PA schools do require the GRE from what I know. Common wisdom is that the GRE can’t get you in, but it can keep you out. If you know that you have trouble with standardized tests, start studying now.</p>