Postby grae313 » Fri Oct 19, 2007 6:19 pm
Based on the practice tests, I figure I should get at least an 800 and since I am a domestic student (and female), I think this will be enough to get them to look closely at the rest of my application, which is very good.
I agree with you that the GRE does a poor job of predicting research ability and success in grad school. I did some research/reading on the subject and studies have shown that, while good GRE's have only a weak correlation to success in graduate school, *bad* GRE's have a pretty strong correlation to doing poorly in graduate school. I've also heard that bad GRE's really hurt your application, but good GRE's won't necessarily help it because as long as you get above a certain percentile score, admissions panels will mostly look at the rest of your application. I think this makes a lot of sense--show that you can at least get a certain score on the GRE, and then it's the rest of your application that they really look at to see if you will be successful in graduate school.
So, while a great score will certaily turn heads, the rest of your application is just as important, if not moreso. On the other hand, if you do bad enough on the GRE, then the rest of your application doesn't matter nearly as much.