GRE waste of time - Need to Make that S* Harder

[iPray]

As it stands, the GRE is pretty worthless when it comes to admission. The verbal and writing portions are worth 0. and the Quant portion is basically worthless as well when 3% of test takers can get a 170 (i.e. half the applicants).

They really need to make that shit a lot harder so a perfect score is actually meaningful and so that the test itself can be used to differentiate candidates.

Personally, I could have gotten a perfect score on the quant section with my eyes closed, its so damn easy. And I wasted about 40 hours of my life memorizing vocab for the verbal which I completely regret now seeing as no adcom actually cares about your verbal section.

Advice to future applicants - dont even bother to study for this, will be a complete waste of time, if you're struggling on the quant section, you wont make it in industry anyways, and nobody cares about the verbal or AW.

Further advice for future applicants - especially for the "math" heavy programs, focus on objective measures of talent that can differentiate yourself beyond the GRE. I honestly wish I had actually practiced for the Putnam now as making Putnam fellow would have surely boosted my chances with programs such as NYU mathfin.

 

[QKR]

Who told you no one cares about the verbal?? lool

It's one of those threshold things where once you're past the 75 percentile ish for verbal, you're in the clear, but I do have friends who were rejected or put on hold with the condition they raise their verbal score.

 

[QKR]

Further advice for future applicants - especially for the "math" heavy programs, focus on objective measures of talent that can differentiate yourself beyond the GRE. I honestly wish I had actually practiced for the Putnam now as making Putnam fellow would have surely boosted my chances with programs such as NYU mathfin.

Yeah, this part I 100% agree with although it *can* be problematic. Putnam is a great way to display mathematical acumen, but it is exclusive to North America, and even so, not everyone will have equal opportunity to write the exam. There's also some weight on the school's willingness to prep students for the exam, some institutions breed Putnam writers. GRE works as an admissions tool since its international and *almost* accessible to everyone.

 

[Charles Hammer]

So many things wrong here.

1) The GRE is NOT intended to differentiate candidates. It is a barrier of entry, an easy and homogeneous measure to make a first cut off. If an admissions committee thinks 165 quant score is enough, they are not going to care if this guy got 170 and this other got 169.

2) They do care about verbal (to some extent). In fact I would argue that since "everyone gets 170 in quant" like you say, if a candidate aced the verbal and the other bombed it, this COULD be the differentiator between them at a latter stage of admission.
They have no use for a math genius who can barely communicate. The so called "soft skills" are important. (Whether or not the GRE verbal measures this is a different story, it doesn't probably, but it's an ok proxy and it comes bundled with the quant score anyway). The fact that the average scores for verbal are relatively low (<70 percentile) speaks poorly of the average applicant, not the program or the admission committee. The MBA guys beat us on this.

3) If you "regret" learning vocabulary because it was "useless" for an admission process then you must be a rather narrow person. Don't be surprised if later in your career you get pigeonholed into pure quant/developer roles. No MD or PM will want you anywhere near their clients if you can't hold a conversation on anything other than math. Learn vocabulary, read literature, learn about rhetoric, etc. for your own edification, not to get a good score on a standardized test.

4) Advice for future applicants: study as much as you need to get the best score you can.

 

[iPray]

Who told you no one cares about the verbal?? lool

It's one of those threshold things where once you're past the 75 percentile ish for verbal, you're in the clear, but I do have friends who were rejected or put on hold with the condition they raise their verbal score.

For an American student, 75th percentile should be a complete joke considering half the people taking the exam

So many things wrong here.

1) The GRE is NOT intended to differentiate candidates. It is a barrier of entry, an easy and homogeneous measure to make a first cut off. If an admissions committee thinks 165 quant score is enough, they are not going to care if this guy got 170 and this other got 169.

2) They do care about verbal (to some extent). In fact I would argue that since "everyone gets 170 in quant" like you say, if a candidate aced the verbal and the other bombed it, this COULD be the differentiator between them at a latter stage of admission.
They have no use for a math genius who can barely communicate. The so called "soft skills" are important. (Whether or not the GRE verbal measures this is a different story, it doesn't probably, but it's an ok proxy and it comes bundled with the quant score anyway). The fact that the average scores for verbal are relatively low (<70 percentile) speaks poorly of the average applicant, not the program or the admission committee. The MBA guys beat us on this.

3) If you "regret" learning vocabulary because it was "useless" for an admission process then you must be a rather narrow person. Don't be surprised if later in your career you get pigeonholed into pure quant/developer roles. No MD or PM will want you anywhere near their clients if you can't hold a conversation on anything other than math. Learn vocabulary, read literature, learn about rhetoric, etc. for your own edification, not to get a good score on a standardized test.

4) Advice for future applicants: study as much as you need to get the best score you can.

1. So explain this one to me, if GRE is just a barrier of entry, then what aspect is used to differentiate candidates? a 500 word personal statement? recommendation letters that basically all sound the same? think about the incentives, undergraduate institutions NEED their students to get into good graduate schools. same goes for GPA. GPA in undergrad is so inflated, I took one semester pass/fail due to sickness and literally did not go to class for a whole semester, never even purchased the textbooks and ended with a B average and no, I didn't go to podonk university.
There are plenty of other "barriers to entry" already, what they need is an OBJECTIVE MEASURE OF TALENT.

2. If you are a US student and cant score above average on a language exam where half the test takers speak english as a second language, I'm not sure what that says about your intellect.

3. As for regretting wasting my time, yes. In this line of work people appreciate brevity and conciseness and I personally roll my eyes when people force an exotic word into a sentence. Holding good conversations does NOT involve a massive GRE vocabulary, and not once in my consulting career, was there a moment where it was like "oh man, if I had known some big words, things would've gone so much better".

 

[AnneF]

I personally memorized no vocab for the verbal and got 96th percentile. ( it is my second language btw) I probably got points deducted as a result of my lack of vocabulary but my point is, if you are good enough at logics, you can get a very decent score (like 165+) without memorizing those shit. You can look at how philosophy students do on verbal vs. how engineering students do. Something is wrong there.

Also, I don't know why you say admission committee doesn't care about the verbal. I am pretty sure the top ones do. The Berkeley Program even asks people to retake AW if they did not get 4.5+. That is what a good Program should ask for. I would want a program to train leaders in the industry, not teaching only pure quants stuffs. If you did well on Putnam, you could get into pretty decent jobs without a MFE from what I've heard. I personally got into NYU math fin (and many other top programs) without Putnam. If you love the really quantitative stuffs, you should go to a phd program and become a researcher of some kind. (But even then you still need good verbal and writing because ultimately you have to communicate your research with others.)

 

[iPray]

I personally memorized no vocab for the verbal and got 96th percentile. ( it is my second language btw) I probably got points deducted as a result of my lack of vocabulary but my point is, if you are good enough at logics, you can get a very decent score (like 165+) without memorizing those shit. You can look at how philosophy students do on verbal vs. how engineering students do. Something is wrong there.

Also, I don't know why you say admission committee doesn't care about the verbal. I am pretty sure the top ones do. The Berkeley Program even asks people to retake AW if they did not get 4.5+. That is what a good Program should ask for. I would want a program to train leaders in the industry, not teaching only pure quants stuffs. If you did well on Putnam, you could get into pretty decent jobs without a MFE from what I've heard. I personally got into NYU math fin (and many other top programs) without Putnam. If you love the really quantitative stuffs, you should go to a phd program and become a researcher of some kind. (But even then you still need good verbal and writing because ultimately you have to communicate your research with others.)

If you cant form a coherent argumentative essay, you dont belong at UCB, or any program for that matter.

Also, I find it hard to believe you can deduce the meaning of enough of the random vocab words in the FOTB questions to get a 95 percentile score without memorizing some unless you already had a massive vocabulary. As a math major, I learned a whopping total of 0 GRE words in my 4 years undergrad. I ended up with a 166 verbal score after cramming a book with 800 words (and still, only questions I got wrong on the exam were because I couldn't deduce the meaning of arbitrarily defined words).

 

[AnneF]

See, how much time did you spend on the 800 vocabs? My guess is not too much. I know a bunch of people who know all the vocabs but still do poorly on verbal part. That kind of bar is what sets you apart from them I guess.

 

[iPray]

Look at the trackers for Johns Hopkins for instance, there is 0 correlation between score and admission, hell, there might even be a negative correlation between GPA and admission from what I'm seeing.

 

[iPray]

I'm curious to know what part was hard to the people who labeled the GRE as hard.

 

[TehRaio]

I really don't like standardized tests. that being said, I would say that the math subject test would be a better quantitative exam since it tests on stuff you will use in the MFE.
Overall if we are ever going to get more recognition from the finance industry in general we need to understand, as a community, that quantitative skills are not the be-all and end-all.

 

[Charles Hammer]

then what aspect is used to differentiate candidates? a 500 word personal statement? recommendation letters that basically all sound the same?

Since you ask, I would say letters of recommendation are one the most important parts. And it is not true that they "all sound the same". Some professors are lazy, true, but if a professor REALLY knows you well, holds you in high regard and wants you to succeed, he will go out of his way to make a good letter. I got the chance to see the letter of one of my professors (after he sent it) and I was pleasantly surprised. It got into a lot of details of the stuff I had done with him, classes, research, and even described some attributes about me I didn't even thought I had. I really believe his letter helped me get into some great places.

If you are genuinely interested in the adcom thought process , here's an interesting reading: "Demystifying the American Graduate Admissions Process" (PDF), written by some guy from Stanford. It is mostly about MS in CS but it shouldn't be to different than for a MFE, except maybe for the emphasis in work experience and "employability".

 

[marcusaurelius]

Since you ask, I would say letters of recommendation are one the most important parts. And it is not true that they "all sound the same". Some professors are lazy, true, but if a professor REALLY knows you well, holds you in high regard and wants you to succeed, he will go out of his way to make a good letter. I got the chance to see the letter of one of my professors (after he sent it) and I was pleasantly surprised. It got into a lot of details of the stuff I had done with him, classes, research, and even described some attributes about me I didn't even thought I had. I really believe his letter helped me get into some great places.

If you are genuinely interested in the adcom thought process , here's an interesting reading: "Demystifying the American Graduate Admissions Process" (PDF), written by some guy from Stanford. It is mostly about MS in CS but it shouldn't be to different than for a MFE, except maybe for the emphasis in work experience and "employability".

BUMP -- interesting read, in regards to the pdf attached, for those currently applying.