Yes, but.... I have had a number of foreign students who could not write English very well and I had to do a lot of re-writing on their dissertations - but the research itself was excellent and we produced many publications. Just more work on the major professor's part.
> I agree with this assessment - especially since some small liberal arts > colleges engage in grade inflation - GPA's are not always reliable. I > think there is considerable value to the GRE scores and having a minimum > is useful. Above that, scores vary widely and are not always predictive > of ultimate success. The most important thing that should be assessed - > and the GREs do not do an adequate job here - is writing ability. Even > mediocre students can complete a research project and muddle through the > data analysis, but when it comes to writing, the grain and chafe fall > into two distinct piles. The worse thing you can do for your career is > to take on mediocre students with poor writing skills. If a project is > never published then it will count for zero to your CV and career > development. I suggest getting the student to send you a writing > sample, or evaluate their writing skills based on the materials they > have submitted. > Mitch Cruzan > > > On 9/3/2014 6:07 AM, Gary Grossman wrote: >> I think that we all look at this issue from a personal perspective, >> especially those that did well on standardized tests, and I've had this >> same argument with colleagues for 30 years, including the exact same >> situation where the student was up for a competitive assistantship with >> a >> mediocre GRE score and a senior-authored publication in an international >> journal. You don't tell us how low the score was and I'd be concerned if >> it >> was a low quantitative score, because grad students need to have a good >> quantitative background. But for researchers, publications are the sine >> quo non and render a low GRE score moot, provided the student actually >> earned the senior authorship (we don't have that info either and I view >> senior authorship differently than junior authorship, especially if >> there >> are more than two authors). The one valid argument that the "keepers of >> the gates" regarding the GRE is that it is the one evaluator that is >> equivalent across all applications,i.e., as faculty we don't have the >> time >> to evaluate if an A at Furman University is the equivalent of an A at >> Chapel Hill. But in the end I've found that the GRE isn't very >> indicative >> of performance by a researcher (I mean really, how could it be, it >> contains >> no information on motivation, persistence, intuition or many other >> characteristics that great researchers have). In fact, I've seen some of >> the biggest flops as graduate students come from students with very high >> GRE scores --- they just happen to be good at taking standardized tests >> but >> not necessarily at research. My own story -- I took the GRE in 1975 and >> earned somewhere between 1150 and 1190 can't remember exactly, but I do >> remember it was a mediocre score. I have 110+ journal articles, >> including >> multiple papers in Am. Nat, Ecology, Ecol. Monogr, Oecologia, Freshwater >> Biol. etc. The math is pretty easy to do <g>. cheers, g2 >> >> >> On Tue, Sep 2, 2014 at 2:03 PM, Alex M. L <[email protected]> >> wrote: >> >>> Last weekend I got into a long discussion on the value of GRE score in >>> a >>> PhD >>> student. As the 2015 applicants start, I open up the discussion to the >>> community: >>> >>> I have a female student that has both a Masters (thesis) and >>> publication >>> with >>> several years research experience. However, her GRE score are quite >>> poor. >>> Should I really pass up a seemingly great applicant because of low >>> scores? >>> >>> If a student has a biology Masters or a publication... do GRE scores >>> matter? >>> Have we not moved past GRE scores when picking the next round of PhD >>> researchers for our lab(s)? >>> >>> If you have a personal story of low scores and still attaining your PhD >>> or >>> accepting a similar student... I would love to hear from you! >>> >>> Cheers! >>> Alex M.L >>> >> >> > > -- > ------------------------------------------------------------------------ > Mitch Cruzan > Professor of Biology > Portland State University > Department of Biology, SRTC rm 246, PO Box 751 > Portland, OR 97207 USA > http://web.pdx.edu/~cruzan/ > ------------------------------------------------------------------------ >
