On the other hand, I have no recollection whatsoever of taking the GRE. Not even a blurry one. I can remember my first conversation with my advisor about possible grad schools almost to the word. Acceptance letters, rejection letters, deposit checks, flying home to flunk a draft exam, renting a hovel in town, but not anything about the GRE. And unlike SATs and even PSATs, I have no documentary evidence, so I have no idea what I got. The selectivity and even demonstrable inaccuracy of personal memory is, perversely enough, one of the things I like best about the work of the historian.

When we admit students to our M.A. program, we don’t use any standardized tests. It’s all based on statements, transcripts and letters of recommendation. With regard to transcripts, we want to see how they did in courses in the discipline, particularly in the last two years of their undergrad study. Were they ‘getting it’ by that point? Were they studying subjects that would prepare them well for success in our admittedly small and specialized grad program? If so, that matters more than all the 4.0s the world can muster!

I think this disconnect between what we “know” and what is happening could come from a few places. Most likely, students keep improving with reading and writing and if it is done right, either the MS or the research prospectus for the PhD is an excellent learning tool. Second, one exam–the GRE or anything else–is one exam. There are myriad reasons why something might go awry (although the smart student then takes the exam again). Third, we are a diamond-in-the-rough sort of place and few students with truly stellar records ever darken our door. We nevertheless need some fundamentals from which to build, for example math, which cross-cuts nearly everything we do and has a literacy aspect.

Your interest in the verbal GRE score for bioscience research is interesting. That’s the only score we look at in our grad admissions, too.

Cutting-edge novel work in the experimental biosciences is all highly interdisciplinary. The only way to survive in a highly interdisciplinary context is to be able to communicate deeply and broadly with people who know things that you don’t about things that you know that they don’t, and vice versa. High verbal GREs are diagnostic of that capacity, which derives in large part from digesting and generating vast amounts of complex text during years of practice reading and writing.

Most of the time it works for most of the students. While I have plenty of C students, I have few who actually just fail (D is failing in my book), and a good proportion of As and Bs and very little complaining about the grade received.

The irony will be that now that I’ve said that….this semester there will be much of complaining.

I hear the slogan “C’s get degrees” all the time. That very well may be true, but C’s don’t get jobs or admission in to graduate school.

Yes! Thank you, ADM. And no, I’m not saying that “students are lazy.” I’m saying that they have decisions to make about how to spend their time. I will freely confess that students are subjected to mixed and even conflicting messages about what college is all about, not just from the culture at large but also from their own institutions of higher education. (After all, what does the promotion of semi-pro sports do for the academic mission? Why do universities tolerate or even encourage tailgating? What does the withdrawl of state and federal support for colleges and universities communicate about the importance of the life of the mind?)

I’m not blaming the students entirely for falling prey to these messages. I’m merely pointing out that those who prioritize their academic work do better in school and in my opinion end up with a better bargain at the far end of college than do their peers who prioritize anything other than their academic success.