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2019 Admission Sweat Thread


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Hi all,

 

Like in other years, this thread is for general discussion among applicants (including vague rumors and outright speculation). The idea is to share what you are going through as you wait for decisions on applications.

 

I do encourage the following: create a thread with your profile and the schools you have applied to and ask people to predict your outcomes. Then, in April, let us know how we did.

 

Remember to be civil to one another and good luck!

 

 

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I wonder if schools will ever start making the GRE optional...some elite undergraduate programs have started to move towards not requiring the SAT.

 

Also, if you guys are applying to schools for which the writing sample is optional, are you submitting it anyways? My advisor seems to think it won’t make too much of a difference, but I’m curious as to what you think

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I know it's an unpopular opinion, but I can't help but think that the GRE and tests like it are reviewed with a higher purpose than the scores we see. Is doing well on the GRE not an indicator that one can put forth the effort to complete a long-term academic task?

 

I think people expect perfect correlation from the pieces that make up a grad school application, where it should be viewed akin to a differential diagnosis; any information that informs adcoms cannot be harmful unless it is misleading. In that case, the question is whether or not the GRE is misleading.

 

The expenses associated with the GRE are another story.

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I know it's an unpopular opinion, but I can't help but think that the GRE and tests like it are reviewed with a higher purpose than the scores we see. Is doing well on the GRE not an indicator that one can put forth the effort to complete a long-term academic task?

 

I think people expect perfect correlation from the pieces that make up a grad school application, where it should be viewed akin to a differential diagnosis; any information that informs adcoms cannot be harmful unless it is misleading. In that case, the question is whether or not the GRE is misleading.

 

The expenses associated with the GRE are another story.

 

The consensus in academia is that GRE scores are a poor predictor of performance in a PhD program compared to other factors such as grades in classes and quality of school attended. As such, they primarily use it as a screening tool at the first stage of the application process, after which it is not so important. In fact, I had a conversation with an old family friend who is a Prof and adcom at a top 50 math PhD program, with over 50 years of adcom experience and he said that the departmental grad administrator/secretary uses GRE as a screening tool, but once an app makes it past the desk rejection stage the GRE genral test is not even looked at.

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The consensus in academia is that GRE scores are a poor predictor of performance in a PhD program compared to other factors such as grades in classes and quality of school attended. As such, they primarily use it as a screening tool at the first stage of the application process, after which it is not so important. In fact, I had a conversation with an old family friend who is a Prof and adcom at a top 50 math PhD program, with over 50 years of adcom experience and he said that the departmental grad administrator/secretary uses GRE as a screening tool, but once an app makes it past the desk rejection stage the GRE genral test is not even looked at.

 

You say it's a poor predictor of performance, not that it doesn't predict performance. That ties into my "differential diagnosis" analogy, right? Or would you argue that the initial screening precludes otherwise stellar candidates?

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You say it's a poor predictor of performance, not that it doesn't predict performance. That ties into my "differential diagnosis" analogy, right? Or would you argue that the initial screening precludes otherwise stellar candidates?

 

Concisely, the way I would look at is that the while the GRE score on its own is a a weak predictor and it provides no predictive ability after controlling for classes, grades, quality of institution, etc., it is still useful since allows schools to filter out a large portion of unqualified applicants.

 

For, a more lengthy explanation, GRE Q scores are highly correlated with intelligence and raw mathematical ability, which is also heavily correlated with grades and quality of UG or MA institution/program. Therefore a student with a low GRE Q score (relative to some cutoff chosen by the program) is likely either less intelligent or less mathematically skilled than what the school desires, and will likely also be relatively poor in the other more predictive categories such as grades, quality of institution and research experience. However, going through a student's full profile is a time consuming process, so using the GRE Q as a cutoff allows you to easily eliminate those students without having to go through their entire profiles. Some top tier programs get over 800 applications per cycle and even many lower tier programs get over 200 so this helps speed up the process a lot.

 

However, within any relatively small range of scores (not percentiles, since the distribution of scores is skewed toward the higher end), say 5-6 points or so, the difference between the scores of two test takers could be something as small as a lucky guess for one taker and a careless error for another, and is not really due to intelligence or raw mathematical ability. As such, in order that they do not miss out on quality candidates who did well, but not 170, even top schools will use some cutoff like 165 or 166 which comes out to approximately 90th percentile. Once that cutoff is reached you can then rely on the more useful information provided by classes, grades, quality of institution, LOR's and research experience. If you look within that 165-170 range, there will probably still be some correlation between quality of applicant and GRE Q score, but it will be much smaller than if you compare it to students who scored a 160.

 

Is there a small possibility that an otherwise stellar applicant will have a GRE Q below the cutoff? Yes, but this is relatively rare, and such an applicant will likely have a LOR writer willing to stick their neck out and make a call or send an email to adcoms at the schools the student is applying to. Is it possible, or even likely that some qualified applicants miss the cutoff? Yes, but most schools, especially in the top 50 (where GRE cutoffs are strictest) have far more qualified applicants than spots.

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Ah, okay. I misunderstood the stance you took in your first post. I agree with you. Thank you for your thorough explanation.

 

Do you think the other two GRE subscores have any merit in the realm of Economics?

 

As long as you don't do terribly bad (anything above 150V & 3.5 or 4 AW is fine) such that it raises some red flags, they are pretty much useless. It's interesting to note that GRE verbal scores are actually a better predictor of success - there was a paper on it from a couple years ago -, probably since there's greater variation in the verbal gre scores as the majority of applicants score in the range of 165-170 for Q.

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As long as you don't do terribly bad (anything above 150V & 3.5 or 4 AW is fine) such that it raises some red flags, they are pretty much useless. It's interesting to note that GRE verbal scores are actually a better predictor of success - there was a paper on it from a couple years ago -, probably since there's greater variation in the verbal gre scores as the majority of applicants score in the range of 165-170 for Q.

 

That's what I had assumed when I posed the question. In a few Math PhD Admissions forums, it always seemed like those who got 170s on Verbal (and high 160s in general) were much more likely to get good admits.

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Hey everyone! Does anyone know if there is any benefit to getting applications in earlier than the deadline?

 

The consensus is that there is no benefit from turning things in early unless there is a special deadline for some fellowships/scholarships (the Knight scholarship at Stanford has an early deadline for economics PhD applicants). I have heard people on here say that ad coms do not look at applications until after the deadline, and even then generally not until early January if the deadline was mid-December.

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  • 2 weeks later...
Yup! Got em all in a little earlier than I thought I would, actually. Once I started rolling I just kept on going, but the first deadlines aren't til the beginning of December... and, it seemed like the lower down in the rankings you go the later the deadlines get.
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Occupy (distract) yourself with something else. Going on sites like this won't help with your obsession if you don't need any advice.

 

Valid advice, but terribly difficult to follow through. The best middle ground would be at least to only check back in late-Jan/early-Feb since that's when the first couple offers start trickling in.

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The claims on page 1 that GRE scores do not predict performance is at odds with the empirical evidence. Athey et al. find that GRE scores strongly predict first year grades, and that first year grades predict job placements. (It is not surprising that controlling for the intermediate outcome, the correlation between GRE scores and predicted grades is small.) NB: economics departments care about first year grades because passing comps is a necessary condition for receiving a PhD, so even if GRE scores only predicted first year grades, it would be rational for admissions committees to consider them.
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The claims on page 1 that GRE scores do not predict performance is at odds with the empirical evidence. Athey et al. find that GRE scores strongly predict first year grades, and that first year grades predict job placements. (It is not surprising that controlling for the intermediate outcome, the correlation between GRE scores and predicted grades is small.) NB: economics departments care about first year grades because passing comps is a necessary condition for receiving a PhD, so even if GRE scores only predicted first year grades, it would be rational for admissions committees to consider them.

 

I hadn't seen the Athey et. al. article, so I appreciate your posting the link. I do not see where the authors say the GRE scores strongly predict first year grades. I probably just missed it. Could you point me to the appropriate point in the article.

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I hadn't seen the Athey et. al. article, so I appreciate your posting the link. I do not see where the authors say the GRE scores strongly predict first year grades. I probably just missed it. Could you point me to the appropriate point in the article.

 

I think Prof was referring to significant coefficients on Table 2 (Y = micro/macro/metrics grades, X = GRE scores).

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