totally unfair

[roozbexm]

The admission decisions are totally unfair. I have 5 papers including 2 papers in the best conference in my field of research and I know I have good recommendation letters and my Masters GPA is above 3.9. but I have rejected from all of the US universities I applied. Just because my undergrad GPA and verbal score was a little bit low (My GRE Q:800 A: 790 V: 320).
The admission list of one of the universities is semi-public. When I compared the admitted student in my field with myself....
They didn't have even one paper. They were from unknown colleges.

My rejection list: USC, Gatech, UMN, Washington,...

[kaluram]

Originally Posted by roozbexm

The admission decisions are totally unfair. I have 5 papers including 2 papers in the best conference in my field of research and I know I have good recommendation letters and my Masters GPA is above 3.9. but I have rejected from all of the US universities I applied. Just because my undergrad GPA and verbal score was a little bit low (My GRE Q:800 A: 790 V: 320).
The admission list of one of the universities is semi-public. When I compared the admitted student with myself....
They didn't have even one paper. They were from unknown colleges.

My rejection list: USC, Gatech, UMN, Washington,...

I know sometimes one feels it's totally unfair, but I can clearly see what was your reason of rejection from all the universities, your Verbal score: it's way too low. Take the GRE again and do well and I bet you'll get in next year.

[roozbexm]

The verbal score should not have any effect on my admission. Knowing some words which are never used, does not determine the success of a PhD applicant.

[misspiggy]

Every school on your rejection list is a top school...

[kaluram]

Originally Posted by roozbexm

The verbal score should not have any effect on my admission. Knowing some words which are never used, does not determine the success of a PhD applicant.

While there is no corelation between the verbal score and the success of a PhD application(I agree), that's not how the admission committee looks at your application. They use some sort of minimum bar to scrutinize the application to make their life easier and your verbal score completely sticks out as an odd stick in your application.

[roozbexm]

I am a top applicant too Those schools are not as good as MIT, Berkeley, Stanford, ...

[misspiggy]

I strongly agree that the verbal score does not determine a student sucess! I think there's no reason for any school to pay any attention to the verbal score when the applicant is a science/engineering related major. How likely are people like us going to use those big words at school when we take classes or do research? Almost never!

If the applicant is an international student, then the TOFEL and TSE can measure the students English ability. If the applicant is American, the that applicant already speaks English natively. So what's the point of using the GRE verbal score when the applicant is a science related major like computer science, physics, math, biology, chemistry, engineering, etc? We are basically not going to use those words, ever! Unfortunately, we all have to take the GRE. But it just wastes so much time for us to memorize those stupid words and do practice tests, and we really could use that time to do something more valuable, like conducting research in our fields.

I also think the GRE verbal is totally meaningless because I know some PhD students who have verbal score > 700 and 800 quantitative, but they don't even speak English well and their departments don't even allow them to work as teaching assistants cause they repeatly fail the Test of Spoken English. If you ask them how they did so well on the GRE verbal part, they tell you that they spent months doing nothing but memorizing words, and that soon after they took the GRE, they forgot most of the words they memorized. I know a physics grad student at my school who got 800 verbal and I heard that he isn't doing well in his classes...

Some of those international students who have high verbal scores can't even write their theses or dissertations cause their English is so bad. At the end, some of these students end up having their advisors write their theses/dissertations cause they just can't write about research in English in a way that people can understand.

On the other hand, I know international students who can speak/write English really well but they only have 300 GRE verbal. They end up doing very well and they do not have trouble with anything.

I hate GRE vebal ! Stupid and Meaningless Test
BTW, my verbal score is probably a reason I got rejected from lots of schools

Originally Posted by roozbexm

The verbal score should not have any effect on my admission. Knowing some words which are never used, does not determine the success of a PhD applicant.

[cridamour]

Just a question, I see you have an old analytical score (i.e., not an analytical writing score). Are you sure your test was still within the time limits? Maybe you took it too long ago and the schools considered it invalid? Just a thought, I might be totally wrong...

[roozbexm]

Originally Posted by cridamour

Just a question, I see you have an old analytical score (i.e., not an analytical writing score). Are you sure your test was still within the time limits? Maybe you took it too long ago and the schools considered it invalid? Just a thought, I might be totally wrong...

No. it's still valid. It has not reached the 5-year limit.

[veroniquaz]

roozbexm:

I also think the low GRE verbal was the main deficiency of your application. The message to me as an adcom would have been that you seem to be a very smart person given your Q and A score and excellent profile, but probably not comitted enough to go to grad school as you did not make that small effort of memorizing a few words and scoring well on V. You also said your undergrad GPA was a bit low. What exactly did you mean by that?