Analyzing an Issue: Writing Tips for the first GRE essay Read the prompt carefully and critically, even skeptically. Seek the central issue and the tension in it. Note in the instructions what narrowing of the topic is indicated or what is indicated that focuses the topic. Every additional prompt in italics implies that you should […]
Forget the old 200-800 scale of GRE grades that held for decades and even now serves as SAT test grade scale. The revised GRE (now about 5 years old) has scores in math and verbal with a range between the uninteresting bounds of 130-170, maybe deliberately innocuous numbers that were chosen to avoid all […]
The GRE has a spotty record actually quite poor at predicting graduate school performance. An internal analysis of 12,000 GRE-takers by Educational Testing Service, the test maker, shows that only 9% (!) of the differences in first year grad grades (the statistic often used to declare grad school a “success”) can be explained by GRE […]
Both GRE and SAT have been well shown to underpredict the performance of females in college and university. That is, females of the same scholastic abilities as males score lower than males well beyond chance on these tests. Studies of the predictability of graduate school grades from GRE scores reveal that women who have been […]