The Graduate Record Examination, more popularly known as GRE, is a standardized test aimed towards graduate school applicants. Thousands of graduate Schools in North America require GRE as part of the application process, and without it, you can’t get in. It is no wonder that GRE is a cause of great stress for many students as their future depends on it. You will find countless posts and queries on different forums lamenting the test, and the displeasure is always apparent.

In the course of your preparation, you will have moments of significant doubt and worry. You will begin to question your abilities, and your annoyance will ultimately turn into anger. Before long, these emotions will eventually culminate into the question, “Is this test even worth it?”

I should make a disclaimer here that not all of you will go through these stages. However, a good chunk of you will entertain this question sooner or later. The reason for this is simple. Some people are good at taking standardized tests, and others aren’t. The problem here lies in graduate school’s reliance on GRE scores as a predictor of grad-school success. This, as it turns out, may not be the case after all.

Your inability to perform well on a test like GRE doesn’t automatically mean that you are unintelligent. Many factors go into how someone will perform on a test, including their financial status, ethnicity, socioeconomic background, and even gender. I will address this a bit more later on; however, I want to touch upon the question, “Is GRE pointless?” first.

Is GRE Pointless?

It depends on what you mean by pointless. As it stands, GRE is a requirement for thousands of graduate schools in the U.S. and across the world. So practically speaking, GRE is not pointless since it helps you get into a school of your choice.

As long as admission boards rely on your GRE score to let you in, GRE will continue to be a significant part of your application process. As to how much weight GRE carries in your application process, it is hard to tell. There are too many schools and too many variables involved to provide a definitive answer. However, it plays a role because universities won’t even accept your application if you don’t have your GRE scores.

Hence, from a purely pragmatic lens, GRE is necessary as long as the end goal is to get into a grad school.

Is GRE a fair assessment of an individual’s abilities?

This is where things get complicated. Whenever we talk about virtues like fairness and justice, a yes or no answer is often not enough. GRE, like any other standardized exam, is designed to test specific abilities. In GRE’s case, these abilities are verbal and math reasoning as well as analytical writing.

So how do you ace the test? Whenever you have a situation where a person’s socioeconomic status affects the end goal, you tend to run into problems concerning equality and fairness. For example, I know for a fact that a person’s GRE scores can be improved. I have been in the test-prep industry for a decade now. I know that with better help, high-quality lessons, credible practice material, and in-person tutoring, an average scorer can attain a 85th percentile score or more in their second or third attempt.

What does this say about GRE, then, or standardized tests in general? If a person’s ability to afford personalized courses or in-person tutoring-worth close to $1000- determines their GRE score, isn’t that inequality by definition?

Study: A test that fails

This is precisely what researchers have come across time and again. In an article published in the Nature journal, professors Casey Miller and Keivan Stassun note that, “The GRE, like most standardized tests, reflects certain demographic characteristics of test-takers — such as family socioeconomic status — that are unrelated to their intellectual capacity or academic preparation…….”

And it makes sense. Imagine being a person who aspires to attend graduate school but has to work two jobs to make ends meet. They live from paycheque to paycheque and can’t afford much in life apart from necessities. Perhaps they stumbled upon a fellowship or a scholarship opportunity one day, and they now have to take the GRE. They know that acing the GRE would significantly increase their chances of attaining the scholarship, but they can only afford to spend on a couple of prep books.

Now take someone who has lived a privileged life, can easily afford expensive online courses or in-person tutoring, and doesn’t have to worry about work, and can devote most of their time to studying every day.

Would anyone be surprised if the second person scored higher than the first one? How is this score an accurate predictor of grad-school performance then? Does the first person’s low score say anything about their intelligence or cognitive abilities? No, it doesn’t. It simply reflects the disparities that exist in a system that relies on a score to grant admissions.

It could very well be that the first person is competent, intelligent, ambitious, and creative, but their socioeconomic position robbed them of this opportunity.

I have seen firsthand that students who perform poorly on their first GRE attempt tend to do significantly better on their second attempt. The difference? They usually sign-up for a quality course or hire a personal tutor.

If we know for a fact that a person can get better at standardized tests when given better prep, what does it say about the test itself? If you can work for it, invest money and time in it, that means you got better at attempting the test. It doesn’t say anything about your intellect or intelligence.

Further studies

Multiple other studies have also found a correlation between scores and students’ socioeconomic status, gender, and race. A research paper out of the University of Missouri compared GRE scores and first-year GPAs of 160 minority students who graduated from distinguished universities with research-focused degrees. Researchers found out that many of these students whose average GPA was 3.51 and ultimately completed their degrees wouldn’t have been admitted to grad programs according to some grad schools admissions policies.

GRE does little to predict graduate school success

The main argument that some academics use in favor of GRE is that it accurately predicts graduate school success. However, Cornell University’s research, titled, “Study of Graduate Record Exam shows it does little to predict graduate school success,” says otherwise.

To assess GREs’ validity in predicting the success or failure of graduate students, Cornell’s researchers asked 40 faculty members of psychology at Yale to provide ratings on five scales of the 166 graduate students they had had since 1980. Moreover, the researchers looked at first and second-year students’ GPAs from their graduate program and evaluated their dissertations by impartial outside raters.

“When the researchers looked at GRE scores and GPAs, they did find a marginal relationship between the scores and grades in the first year of graduate study. When they looked in more detail at the GRE subtests and the genders separately, they found only one of them (the analytical test score) successfully predicted more consequential evaluations of student performance (dissertation reader ratings) — but this was only true for men. For women, there was no prediction.”

Does this mean ETS is implicitly biased?

I don’t think so. The education system at large is the problem here. The universities’ reliance on standardized testing for admissions is the main barrier here. I wouldn’t accuse ETS of purposefully nourishing a system that results in inequality, same as I wouldn’t blame any other standardized test.

In an ETS report titled “Toward a Description of Successful Graduate Students,” the creator of GRE even admits that GRE doesn’t measure the critical skills associated with scholarly and professional competence.

The report also acknowledges GRE’s limitations in light of the complex graduate education process.

“The limitations of graduate school admissions tests in the face of the complexity of the graduate education process have long been recognized.”

The problem of standardized testing is bigger than ETS or any one company alone. However, ETS can improve its testing methodology to reflect the socioeconomic status and other relevant variables more accurately.

In an ideal world, we would have a much better test to vet potential grad-school applicants. One that takes into account all the various factors that affect a person’s score. However, for the foreseeable future, standardized testing doesn’t seem to be going anywhere.

Unless federal or state governments intervene and pass bills prohibiting such tests, universities will continue to use them.

For now, students should make the best of it and use their “personal statements” to communicate to the admissions board the intricacies of their lives. Your application should contain all the relevant details that might have contributed to a low GRE score.