milkywayguy wrote:It's great to see more astronomy programs dropping the PGRE requirement! Thank you so much for bringing this to attention
cosmosis wrote:One of the big issues with GRE in general is that it is correlated with socio-economic status of students. While other aspects of the applications require little or no fee (e.g. students can apply for fee waivers), GRE makes it very difficult for students from lower socioeconomic backgrounds to (a) repeat GRE tests because of the cost and (b) apply to fewer schools compared to their peers because there is no fee waiver for sending scores and each score report costs $27. Having personally faced this issue and having seen many of my friends restrict the number of schools they are applying to because of this, yes I do think that it does more harm as it creates stratification among students. If schools have reasons to believe that GRE is a good indicator, then they should either (a) pressure ETS to lower the cost or (b) like transcripts, ask students to submit unofficial GRE scores until they officially admit the student.
quizivex wrote:The PGRE is a valuable metric for comparing students from different undergraduate institutions. It's important to have a standardized metric, just like med schools have MCAT and law schools have LSAT. It can be a lifesaver for students from average undergrad institutions who want to stand out to top graduate programs. I was admitted to three top physics programs in 2008 and I don't think that would've happened if there was no PGRE. A high GPA from a low ranked school is not enough to stand out. What else do we have? Every applicant gets glowing LOR's and has "research experience", whose outcome depends more on the advisor/group/lab than the student. At least the PGRE directly tests a student's understanding of undergraduate physics.
Indeed, the PGRE or any standardized test could be improved. Perhaps the astronomy community would be better off having an astronomy GRE. But there should still be a standardized test. Tests play an even bigger role in grad school. The quals/prelims are arguably less fair because instead of 100 questions spread over all physics topics there's only a few hit or miss problems, and it's pass/fail.
Also, the PGRE doesn't create an income bias... College tuitions cost 2-3 orders of magnitude more than the PGRE... And students who are able to attend the better (often more expensive) colleges have numerous advantages (better instructors, better advising, better research opportunities, etc) over students who cannot afford those colleges or were unable to get admitted due to a disadvantaged pre-college education. If we're going to disregard the PGRE because it costs money, then we should disregard everyone's college record too.
By the way, I would certainly agree that ETS's new Score Select policy is a step in the wrong direction. It give students incentives to take the test many times and could put students at a disadvantage who don't want to take it many times or have financial pressures. It's a profit-driven scam, as is the outrageous cost of ETS score reports. But overall the PGRE test itself has a valuable role and shouldn't be used as a scapegoat for problems in our field. The PGRE asks questions about circuits, Doppler shift and point charges... and people try to say that the test has gender or racial bias. Sigh.
quizivex wrote:The PGRE is a valuable metric for comparing students from different undergraduate institutions. It's important to have a standardized metric, just like med schools have MCAT and law schools have LSAT.
...
The PGRE asks questions about circuits, Doppler shift and point charges... and people try to say that the test has gender or racial bias. Sigh.
quizivex wrote:Indeed, the PGRE or any standardized test could be improved. Perhaps the astronomy community would be better off having an astronomy GRE. But there should still be a standardized test. Tests play an even bigger role in grad school. The quals/prelims are arguably less fair because instead of 100 questions spread over all physics topics there's only a few hit or miss problems, and it's pass/fail.
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