GPAs are a less reliable indicator of potential for a variety of
reasons. For one, there is a large amount of variation in in the
quality of education and standards for assessment across institutions.
It is also true that a student's GPA can be damaged due to issues that
are external to academics. I agree that grade inflation appears to be
trending up across the board, but it seems to be much worse at private
institutions. See this web site for some data:
http://www.gradeinflation.com/
I personally have had very good experiences with students recruited from
private and public institutions. I do not think the grade inflation
problem is so prevalent that we should completely ignore GPAs - it just
needs to be viewed in the context of everything else.
I have noticed in this thread that a number of people have complained
that the GREs are focused on "tricky" questions and obscure
information. I think this perspective is due to a lack of understanding
of the goals of the exam. It is unfortunate that much of our
undergraduate curricula do not prepare students very well for all
aspects of graduate school. Yes, it is good to be able to memorize lots
of information and to have a good memory for facts, but success in
research requires critical thinking, creativity, and persistence. The
GRE at least attempts to get at that the first two of these. The most
important things we can say about the GREs is that we at least know the
content and it is consistent no matter where a student is coming from.
As several others have already said, graduate admission decisions are
really about the whole package and no single item should be used as a
litmus test. It is good to have soft minimums, but these need to be
viewed in the context of all the available information.
Students should not obsess over their GRE scores - you just need a good
score, not the best score. I tell my students that the single best
thing they can do to get into a good graduate program is to participate
in undergraduate independent research. This will not only get them good
letters but it will give them a taste of the challenges they will
experience in grad school. This is the one criterion that often weighs
most heavily in admission decisions made by many PIs and admission
committees.
Mitch Cruzan
On 9/4/2014 6:12 AM, David M. Lawrence wrote:
Large public and private colleges and universities also engage in
grade inflation, and I just read something to the effect that the
problem may be worse at larger institutions. One large state
university (which happens to be one of the biggest research
universities in the nation) is coming out with an enhanced transcript
to dampen the grade inflation on its campus.
So maybe we should keep statements such as, "... some small liberal
arts colleges engage ..." better grounded empirically.
Dave
On 9/3/2014 9:22 PM, Mitch Cruzan wrote:
I agree with this assessment - especially since some small liberal
arts colleges engage in grade inflation - GPA's are not always
reliable. I think there is considerable value to the GRE scores and
having a minimum is useful. Above that, scores vary widely and are
not always predictive of ultimate success. The most important thing
that should be assessed - and the GREs do not do an adequate job here
- is writing ability. Even mediocre students can complete a research
project and muddle through the data analysis, but when it comes to
writing, the grain and chafe fall into two distinct piles. The worse
thing you can do for your career is to take on mediocre students with
poor writing skills. If a project is never published then it will
count for zero to your CV and career development. I suggest getting
the student to send you a writing sample, or evaluate their writing
skills based on the materials they have submitted.
Mitch Cruzan
On 9/3/2014 6:07 AM, Gary Grossman wrote:
I think that we all look at this issue from a personal perspective,
especially those that did well on standardized tests, and I've had
this
same argument with colleagues for 30 years, including the exact same
situation where the student was up for a competitive assistantship
with a
mediocre GRE score and a senior-authored publication in an
international
journal. You don't tell us how low the score was and I'd be
concerned if it
was a low quantitative score, because grad students need to have a good
quantitative background. But for researchers, publications are the
sine
quo non and render a low GRE score moot, provided the student actually
earned the senior authorship (we don't have that info either and I view
senior authorship differently than junior authorship, especially if
there
are more than two authors). The one valid argument that the
"keepers of
the gates" regarding the GRE is that it is the one evaluator that is
equivalent across all applications,i.e., as faculty we don't have
the time
to evaluate if an A at Furman University is the equivalent of an A at
Chapel Hill. But in the end I've found that the GRE isn't very
indicative
of performance by a researcher (I mean really, how could it be, it
contains
no information on motivation, persistence, intuition or many other
characteristics that great researchers have). In fact, I've seen
some of
the biggest flops as graduate students come from students with very
high
GRE scores --- they just happen to be good at taking standardized
tests but
not necessarily at research. My own story -- I took the GRE in 1975
and
earned somewhere between 1150 and 1190 can't remember exactly, but I do
remember it was a mediocre score. I have 110+ journal articles,
including
multiple papers in Am. Nat, Ecology, Ecol. Monogr, Oecologia,
Freshwater
Biol. etc. The math is pretty easy to do <g>. cheers, g2
On Tue, Sep 2, 2014 at 2:03 PM, Alex M. L
<stenella.fronta...@yahoo.com>
wrote:
Last weekend I got into a long discussion on the value of GRE score
in a
PhD
student. As the 2015 applicants start, I open up the discussion to the
community:
I have a female student that has both a Masters (thesis) and
publication
with
several years research experience. However, her GRE score are quite
poor.
Should I really pass up a seemingly great applicant because of low
scores?
If a student has a biology Masters or a publication... do GRE scores
matter?
Have we not moved past GRE scores when picking the next round of PhD
researchers for our lab(s)?
If you have a personal story of low scores and still attaining your
PhD or
accepting a similar student... I would love to hear from you!
Cheers!
Alex M.L
--
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Mitch Cruzan
Professor of Biology
Portland State University
Department of Biology, SRTC rm 246, PO Box 751
Portland, OR 97207 USA
http://web.pdx.edu/~cruzan/
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