How important are GRE scores for graduate school applications in the United States?

Mondo Education Updated on 2024-02-19

Everyone knows that GRE scores are a crucial point in the process of applying for graduate school in the United States, but its importance is reflected in **: is it a stepping stone to various schools? Or is it a threshold-type exam or a brush-type exam? How useful is it for applying for scholarships? How do GRE scores help you apply to your dream colleges? In this article, we will help you analyze it from several angles.

As we all know, GRE scores play a vital role in the U.S. graduate application process. But what exactly is it important? Is it used as an admission ticket to the school, or as a threshold test or a graded test? How much of an impact does it have on applying for scholarships? How do GRE scores help you apply to your dream college? In this article, we will unravel these issues from multiple perspectives.

1. What is the importance of the GRE in the application process?

ETS conducted a survey on the impact of GRE scores on graduate applications, and collected a total of 163 valid questionnaires from 31 colleges and different majors. The results of the survey showed:The three individual scores on the GRE General Test are of moderate importance in the application, with 2 in Chinese, 2 in Mathematics and 2 in Writing4(sd.3(sd=1.24) and 22(sd=1.09)

2. How important is the GRE for applying for scholarships?

The selection of a scholarship is usually divided into two stages: first, each department submits a list of candidates, and then the school selects the final winner from among all the candidates. GRE language and math scores are considered in this process, with more than half of faculties claiming that GRE writing scores are not being examined. Some faculties believe that a personal statement is a better reflection of a student's writing ability in comparison.

3. Does GRE need to pursue high scores?

Most colleges say that GRE scores can be used to consider applicants as a whole. 38% of colleges said they had a minimum GRE score requirement for applicants. Thirty-one percent of colleges said that GRE scores are not important if the applicant is good enough in other conditions, but if other conditions are weak, they can be compensated by GRE scores. Thirty-one percent of colleges said GRE scores were used to classify applicants by likelihood of admission.

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4. What abilities does the GRE reflect on the candidate?

According to the academic ** published by the Educational Testing Service (ETS) in the official ** "The Validity of Scores from the Gre" (by J.). w. young, d. klieger, j. bochenek, c. li, and f.CLINE 2014), which has this interpretation of GRE scores:

gre-verbal and gre-quantitative scores were good predictors of cumulative graduate gpa (ggpa) and correlated as well as with this criterion measure, if not better than, undergraduate gpa (ugpa)”

Obviously,The core value of GRE test scores lies in a student's academic performance at the graduate level, which is their academic potential: the higher the GRE score, the more likely it is to attract the attention of the supervisor and let them see the student's potential。We can conclude that GRE scores have an effect on college grades; Considering that there are thousands of universities around the world, each with different academic evaluation criteria for undergraduates, GRE scores are irreplaceable and authoritative in assessing academic potential as a standardized test worldwide.

As a standardized tool for assessing academic potential, the GRE is widely used in graduate applications in a variety of majors, including humanities, natural sciences, engineering, business, and more. However, it is generally accepted that Chinese students have a high level of math proficiency, with a basic accuracy rate of more than 90%, while science and engineering students generally have lower English proficiency than humanities students, so their GRE language scores may be slightly lower, does this mean that humanities students have a clear advantage when taking the GRE test and applying for graduate school? The answer is no,Different majors place different emphasis on GRE scores。According to "The Validity of Scores from the Gre".

gre-v scores were found to be better predictors of ggpa for humanities and social science students than gre-q scores. gre-v and gre-q scores predicted ggpa about equally well for life science students, whereas gre-q scores were found to be better predictors of ggpa for mathematics/physical science students than were gre-v scores.”

For humanities and social sciences majorsGRE scores in language are more effective than math scores in achieving academic performance at the graduate level.

For life sciences majorsGrades in both the Chinese and Maths sections of the GRE are crucial.

For science and engineering majorsGRE math scores are more effective than language scores for student academic performance at the graduate level.

Although humanities majors have a stronger foundation in English and generally score higher on the GRE language section than science and engineering students, two graduate schools with different majors do not assess students' academic potential according to the same criteria. We can draw a conclusion:With standardized GRE scores, students in science, engineering, and humanities don't have to make cross-major comparisons。Overall, the importance of GRE scores in the application process cannot be overlooked, and the higher the score, the greater the competitive advantage in the application!

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