GRE/TOEFL Question for International Students

Graduate School
1

<p>I'm asking this question for a friend.</p>

<p>I have a friend who's a non-native speaker in a Master's program and currently looking to start in a PhD program in Political Science in the states. She has a question about his standardized test scores.</p>

<p>She didn't do too wonderfully on the verbal GRE (getting something around a 450 or so, which is the 45th %ile), but he got a 109/120 on the internet-based TOEFL (which is around the 96th %ile, according to the internet). Apparently she just had a very hard time with the vocabulary words. Also, she didn't do very well on the math GRE (I don't know her score), but I'm assuming that's of extremely little importance.</p>

<p>Anyway, I was wondering what graduate programs in Political Science might think of these scores. I've gone through the process myself, so I know that GRE scores aren't the most important thing in the world, especially for non-native speakers, but I was wondering what some of the top 30 programs or so might think of this combination.</p>

<p>Thanks for your time!</p>

2

<p>emengee,</p>

<p>Top 15 poli sci programs are usually less worried about the verbal score for non-natives, but quantitative scores tend to be important. Unless she's doing theory, a lot of poli sci these days is borrowed econ tools, which means a lot of math. </p>

<p>In short, quant scores do matter for poli sci programs. I don't know how much it'll matter for top 30 to 15, but for top 15 you're looking at 90th percentile plus.</p>

3

<p>90th percentile means 790 or 800 on the GRE quant. There's no way they would require that of polisci majors - even at top schools it's just not realistic at all.</p>

4

<p>nauru,</p>

<p>My year, it was around a 750 or so for top programs (Harvard through to UCLA). I guess that's not 90th for quant, but you're going to want at least 90th for verbal if you're a native speaker.</p>