| Getting Into A Psychology Graduate Program |
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Page 4 of 8 The Inside Story: GRE Don’t get me started on the GRE. I hate it. I loath it. I find ABOMINATE it. To put it succinctly… it’s annoying. The GRE, or Graduate Record Exam, is administered through Prometric test centers around the country. Developed and maintained by ETS (Educational Testing Service), it is supposed to be a good indicator of how a person will do in graduate study by measuring their verbal, analytic, and quantitative skills. In my opinion, for what it’s worth, it doesn’t. The Test 
The GRE is made up of 3 parts: an analytic writing portion, a verbal portion, and a quantitative portion. In practice, you’ll also find your test to have one additional section of verbal or quantitative. This additional section is where ETS uses you as a guinea pig, testing out new questions and seeing how you do. The kicker? You don’t usually know what section is the test section, and which are the real deals. Some books teach you how to supposedly find the test section, but you don’t want to take a chance and blow it do you? The first time I took the test, it didn’t tell me which section was the experimental test section, the second time it did. What did I do the second time on the experimental section? Blew it off! Who wants to give ETS more of their time when there is a test score anxiously waiting to be seen? Speaking of which…Scoring What’s a “good” score on the GRE? This is probably the question that most eluded me when I was studying for it. In this world, no one wants to commit to exact figures, but I’ll try to give you a good estimate. Each portion of the test is rated on a scale of 200 – 900, just like the SAT, with the exception of the analytic writing. Writing is scored in half-steps from 1 to 6 (i.e. 4.5, 5, 5.5, 6). So what’s good? 550 is usually the agreed MINIMAL score on the verbal and quant. You want scores above 600. Schools take the best scores normally out of all the times you take the exam. So if you take it twice and score higher on verbal the second time but lower on quant, they’ll take your highest verbal and highest quant. So Jon – what was your scores? I will admit my scores for the sake of your continued knowledge. The first time I took the GRE, I scored 550 on quant, 570 on verbal, and 4.5 on analytical writing. The second time I took it, I scored 550 on verbal, 610 on quant, and 5.0 on analytical writing. The latter scores just got me by, and I really should have taken it again. Consider my last scores your bare minimum. That being said, I have friends who scored lower and have been interviewed. It all depends on the program you’re applying to and how much weight they put on the GRE. There are graduate program directories out there (see your local book store) that give each program’s ranking of qualifications. Ones that place GRE scores below letters of recommendation and GPA generally are more accepting of lower scores. One caveat to bring to your attention: Schools know which other programs you’ve applied to by looking at where your GRE scores were sent to (They get this information when they get your scores). If you are applying to different kinds of programs, especially ones at different ends of the spectrum in psych (i.e. experimental and clinical) they may have some questions to ask or be very critical of your application as they may view you as undecided. I don’t know if requesting score reports individually for each school (instead of using the 4 blanks on the GRE score request form) would avoid this problem or not. The Subject Test The Psychology subject test is given in a paper and pencil format, not like the computer based general test. While this may be easier on some, it means it’s only offered 3 – 4 times a year. If you register too late, you don’t get a seat. See my timeline for more advice on this. The caveat on the subject test that they hesitate to tell you is how it’s scored. It is still on the 200 – 900 score range, but skipped questions hurt you less than wrong questions. Here is how they compute your score: Number of Questions you got Right – ¼ of the questions you got wrong. Notice that skipped questions don’t get in the raw score equation at all. This means if you can’t eliminate any choices from the 5 given, skip it – it’s not worth the wrong question. However, if you can eliminate 1 or more, try to get it right! If you’re confused on this, ask the proctor to talk about it before she gives out the exam. You can find more about the subject test at http://ftp.ets.org/pub/gre/Psychology.pdf |
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