What is a good predictor of a graduate student?
Ever since I started the Psychology program at McGill, all I have ever heard is “If you want to get into grad school, you need a good GPA and good GRE scores or you won’t even be considered”. Essentially, to move on in my academic career in Experimental Psychology, I need to master the mastery tests and meet the standards of the standardized tests. Well I’ll be honest here: I have none of these. My GPA is not horrible but does not meet the requirements of most grad schools and my analytic GRE scores could have been much better had I been better at solving math problems under the pressure of a ticking timer. Based on this information, I’m a terrible candidate for grad school. As we have all been told, schools will prioritize different things when considering their applicants. Some make their initial cut-off solely based on GPA. Others will look more at GRE scores and believe that answering 20 text comprehension and math problems in under 30 minutes will show them the candidates that best suit the world of psychological research. I don’t know about you, but to me this looks like a lot of competent people are falling through the cracks here. What about the people who get confused by multiple choice questions and recognition but can write an essay linking all of the class concepts together? What about the people who freeze as they see the timer tick but can’t remember the formulas they learned in their 8th grade geometry class? What if these people have been working in a lab for their four undergrad years and can basically complete a research project but who will never have the opportunity to do so because they don’t have the scores? They get refused and cannot hone their research skills further. You can probably all see where this is going. Based on my GPA, I have not mastered any information that is given to me during my lectures and based on my GRE scores, I will fail to efficiently find solutions to all the problems I may encounter during my research. Yet, I still applied to grad school. I wanted to have the experience and get my name out there. I have two years of research experience and am now completing an undergraduate thesis. That is all I have to recommend me: my hands-on experience of the research I hope to pursue in my graduate degrees. Well let me tell you now (without trying to sound too narcissistic): I have been accepted into a Psychology graduate program in an excellent Canadian school. And no. My GPA and GRE were not good predictors of my admittance, my experience and knowledge about my research interests are what got me through. I may not be able to tell you the percentage of the population suffering from all known mental illnesses but I sure as heck can tell you about the neuroanatomy of the brain and how to analyze its connectivity.
