Today I saw a question from one student “I want to know that only GRE (general test) is responsible for admission in any U.S. university??? I mean to say why GRE (subject test) is not taken?? One can be better judged on GRE (subject test) instead of GRE (general test)…..”
First of all, let me clarify that the GRE general test is required by almost all graduate programs in the U.S. On the contrary, the GRE subject test is required by specific programs, especially research-based Masters and Ph.D. You must check with your prospective schools if they need the subject test.
GRE General Test
The GRE general test is an aptitude test that only measures your basic reasoning and analytical skills – two skills that are ESSENTIAL to thrive and succeed in any subject area, be it medical, engineering or business studies. Of course, we all have done a lot of math in our school days, and every single one of us has studied basic mathematics up till the high school level. The GRE general exam simply uses that basic knowledge by throwing us a bunch of tricks and trap questions under extremely timed conditions.
I would agree to a certain extent that the verbal portion is a tough ask for many of us, but then for most programs, we just need an average verbal score to get through. Moreover, quantitative fields emphasize your GRE quant scores, whereas the social science and language fields focus more on your verbal score.
Also, there is a massive meta-analysis by Kuncel et al. (2001) that proves that there is a high correlation between various aspects of the GRE and performance in graduate school. This study has also shown a relationship between GRE scores with GPA and GRE scores with the student’s faculty ratings.
Standardized tests like GRE measure your baseline ability. Mostly it’s the baseline test that most graduate schools require. Programs in the U.S. require GRE because it provides a standard way to compare candidates to each other;
In layman’s words, it tells the admission committee how a guy with a GPA of 3.5 can be compared to someone with a GPA of 3.5 at Iqra University.
GRE Subject Tests
The GRE subject test is a competence measurement test. It highlights your strengths in a specific subject area such as Biology, Physics, or Math. But not all programs need subject test scores since they only want candidates with a baseline performance, which is measured by the GRE general exam.
Correlations of the GRE subject test with research and publication citation counts are higher than those with the general examination. This is not surprising since research and publications require only subject-specific knowledge, which is only checked using the subject test scores.
Thus, the GRE combines both standardization and competence measurement.