GRE and Graduate Funding

Graduate School
1

<p>Does anyone know how the GREs are taken into account for funding? How heavily (if at all) is the Analytical Writing portion weighted?</p>

2

<p>Very high GREs across the board can supply a good basis for a department to recommend a student for a university-wide fellowship. There are few ways to compare applicants across disciplines, and therefore departments will choose applications with the highest GRE scores to recommend to the fellowship committees (who will be determining awards for all disciplines).</p>

<p>There are some departments that look closely at AW scores. There are some that do not. Personally, I do not weight them heavily in my own admissions decisions, since I believe that at this point, the way they are scored (five paragraph structure, with intro, evidence, counterevidence and conclusion) is too mechanical to adequately make a judgment about an applicant’s writing ability.</p>

3

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<p>Are you saying this is how the GRE essays need to be written? I haven’t gotten my score back, but I have no idea if I wrote exactly five paragraphs.</p>

<p>I have always considered myself a pretty good writer, so I didn’t even prepare for the writing portion at all. I hope the grading is not that mechanical.</p>

4

<p>The rigid five-paragraph format is not necessary, but the grading is rather mechanical, in my opinion. </p>

<p><a href=“http://www.ets.org/Media/Tests/GRE/pdf/awintro.pdf[/url]”>http://www.ets.org/Media/Tests/GRE/pdf/awintro.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>See pages 27-29.</p>

5

<p>Professor X, if you have a chance, do unusually high GRE General/Subject scores ever help much in actual admissions? Let’s say you have a perfect score in the most relevant section(s) of the GRE general, a very high score in the other section(s), and a subject score 50 points above the 99th percentile. Will your test scores get your file a second glance or are they just the equivalent of another pretty good score?</p>

6

<p>When an applicant presents outstanding scores, I make a note to keep them in mind for fellowship nominations if the rest of their applications are strong.</p>

<p>Of course, if they are just not a good fit for the program, then they still won’t be admitted.</p>

7

<p>Thanks as always, Professor X.</p>