My D plans to go to a Ph D program in math. Excellent GPA and great research. Pretty sure the recommendations will be outstanding. Not sure about GREs. She is taking both general and subject tests in October. She doesn’t have nuch free time to study for. Besides, she is not good at drilling for the test and doesn’t care the time pressure during the test.
Not possible to answer. It depends on the admission requirements of the specific programs.
My son is in a math doctorate program now. His advisers said gre scores were Very important. I was surprised at how much emphasis there was on them. Next seemed to be recommendations.
He is a good test taker and doesn’t mind the time pressure. I think he used one of the gre review books to go over concepts and some practice and was able to do very well.
The GREs are sorta like the SATs were for undergraduate admission.
The importance of the GRE depends completely on the acceptance criteria for the specific program.
thumper, admission requirements seem about the same throughout the programs; research, recs, gap, and tests. No way to know where the emphasis are.
Python, did they select by the test scores? I heard a lot about how research experiences are.
How would one know the acceptance criteria? is there anything spelled out or do they do holistic?
For most, GRE is the least important part, can keep you out but not get you in. Great research experience can trump gpa and GRE. It gives you great letters. But then the super tip top programs get both. My dd got a top ten cs program though without bother a retake after not ideal math score. For math, I expect it is different. Letters would certainly be important. I’m not surprised somehow what python20 says. Check with grad forum, it is quite helpful.
check out thegradcafe.com results section - should be very helpful
Depends entirely on the program. I know the people who sit on the adcomm for my PhD program and they admitted they didn’t even look at our GRE scores. The university just requires them.
For someone applying to a math program, the math score is the only one that will matter.
For a PhD in a STEM subject, in this case, math…both the GRE and the subject GRE will be very important. She better get an extremely high/perfect Quantitative score on the new GRE…whatever is the equivalent of an 800 on the old GRE Q.
The Verbal score can be less important for a STEM PhD applicant, but something along the equivalent of a 650+ of the old score should be the minimum unless English isn’t your first language.
Admissions to math PhD programs are tough. Even the so-called “safeties” (ha ha) will only admit about 15% of applicants. The better programs only admit about 5% of applicants.
STEM grad programs care about their reported average GRE numbers.
Here’s and old GRE vs new GRE converter.
http://magoosh.com/gre/2012/new-gre-score-conversion/
Is iglooo’s D a STEM student? I can’t find where iglooo mentioned a field (though maybe it’s in other threads).
The Math subject GRE was the important number. When ds originally incorrectly reported a lower score to his adviser and then corrected the result, the adviser did add higher ranked programs as possible places to apply.
If a score can keep you out I wouldn’t call it the least important part. It is a bar you have to clear. But it’s also true that the score won’t get you in. The schools will look at recommendations, research and the essay (Why I want to be a mathematician).
My son worked entirely with his teachers and adviser choosing the programs to apply to. I was surprised that they suggested applying tp 12+ programs.
About a decade aho, one Chemistry major at DS’s college was applying to Chemistry PhD Programs. If I remember it correctly, she said the research experience is much more important than GRE scores. But she said this is only so for domestic students. (But she said the scores should not be too bad. Basically, she was not willing to spend too much of her time to study for it.)
But not all STEM majors are the same. Also, this was 10 years ago; it could be very different back then.
Standardized tests are so “high school-ish.” But I “suffered” by having to take well too many standardized tests in my life time (when the dinosaur still roamed the world) so I naturally do not like the idea of forcing all students to take standardized tests in general.
12+ programs! That’s a lot.
m2ck, verbal is not an issue for my D. She was always good with words. With quant, she gets hung up on a problem and runs out time. One or two missed problems can be costly.
@rockymtnhigh, where in thegradcafe.com can you look up admission stats. The only thing I found was a list of acceptance without much info.
@romanigypsyeyes, in my first sentence.
@iglooo wow. I must be really tired, I completely missed that. My apologies.
In that case, ignore my post completely. GRE scores (especially math) are almost always very important.
http://www.thegradcafe.com/survey/ That’s for the grad cafe admissions stats. Unfortunately, there is no aggregate of the data AFAIK.
It’s best to do well, ie get 800 on the math. If it that is not achievable then good grades, research experience and letter of recommendations help.
My friend who was accepted to PhD engineering at Stanford got either 800 or close to it. But he also got a MS from Stanford. So the professors probably know him.
The GRE is adaptive within sections. Too many wrong answers in the first section will really knock your score down.
The good thing is that you get your scores immediately after the end of the test, except for the essay section.
Re:
I have never understood this part: It seems to me that “one or two missed questions” would always be more costly on a math standardized test than on a verbal standardized test (e.g., on SAT). Why is the scoring of the tests designed like this?
However, I heard that the scoring of the verbal section on MCAT is just the opposite: missing one or two problems is much more damaging than doing the same on any other science related sections. It seems all of a sudden that the science and math (which is not tested at all) is less important than verbal for someone who is going into this career path. Also, it seems to me that the way to learn science for a premed is very different from the way to learn science for someone who is aspiring to enter a PhD program. It will be even more different after these two groups of students get into their respective programs.