Grading the GRE

Furrowing my brow, I struggled to recall the Quadratic Formula, hurriedly trying to finish my test before time was up. No, this was not a test that I wrote in high school. This was part of my preparation for the Graduate Record Examination, the test that stands between many hopeful undergraduates and their acceptance to their Master’s and Doctoral programs of choice. After a few weeks of study, my enthusiasm was waning, and my disdain for geometry awakened after many years of lying dormant and forgotten. I couldn’t help but wonder how understanding the nuances of triangular geometry was going to aid me in my study of Counselling Psychology, or predict my success within that field. I decided to do a little digging, to see if the GRE is all that its cracked up to be in terms of predicting graduate school performance.

The first study I happened across showed that scores on the GRE were successful in predicting graduate school performance, but this “performance” was only judged by participants’ first year graduate school GPA (Bridgeman, Burton, & Cline, 2008). Fortunately, the second study that I found was much more comprehensive, as it judged graduate school performance by looking at graduate grade point average, first-year graduate grade point average, comprehensive exam scores, faculty ratings, degree attainment, time to complete, research productivity, and publication citation count (Kuncell, Hezlett, & Ones, 2001). This study showed that GRE scores fared somewhat better but similarly to Undergraduate GPAs when predicting graduate school performance in all areas, except for degree attainment, where GRE scores were much more strongly predictive than participants’ undergraduate GPAs.

So, the GRE is actually pretty good at predicting graduate school success. FINE. I guess I accept defeat and keep chipping away at high school algebra.

Bridgeman, B., Burton, N.W., & Cline, F. (2008). Understanding What the Numbers Mean: A Straightforward Approach to GRE Predictive Validity. ETS Research Report , 2014, 5.1.1–5.1.4.

Kuncell, N.R., Hezlett, S.A., & Ones, D.S. A Comprehensive Meta-Analysis of the Predictive Validity of the GRE: Implications for Graduate Student Selection and Performance. Psychological Bulletin, 127(1), 162–181.

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