Do grad schools have access to your GRE scores?

Post Reply New Topic

Even if you didn't request them to be sent out to the specific school? Perhaps they get sent peoples' scores of they receive a certain grade or higher?

I ask this because ever since I took the GRE at the end of the summer and received a near-perfect math score (790/800), I've been receiving a lot of mail and e-mails from various, and frequently prestigious, technical universities. If they were just blank "Apply for any program here" type of things, I'd think it were normal, but a lot of them are oddly specific. Most notable was a letter from Johns Hopkins University asking me to apply to their Molecular Biophysics program, offering me free tuition and health care with a $30,000 a year stipend (still debating this one).

Last edited by DNForrest on 20 Jan 2009, 11:34 am, edited 1 time in total.

As I recall (from a million years ago - LOL!), when you submit the application for the GRE's, there's something that most people check off allowing schools that might be interested to contact you. I don't think they get your exact scores, but they get the information on people within a certain range, but I'm not sure.

I was trying to remember if there was something like that when I took it. I was somewhat rushing through the exam (as is reflected in my dismal Verbal score of 460).

Apparently, Johns Hopkins doesn't care about your verbal score! LOL! Congratulations on the interest from Hopkins - that's great!

Haha, I don't think that a Molecular Biophysics program that's focused on computations hinges too much on its occupants' verbal skills. Unfortunately, I wouldn't be able to enter such a program, at least not until at least after I get my Master's degree, since my grandparents want me to stick around Oregon if I get my grad degree, due to my grandma's ill health. Still, it's a bit of a self-esteem boost to be probed by such a school (and several others).

Indeed it is.

They shouldn't, unless you indicated it was ok for them to be available to schools when you registered for the test.

One thing to remember about the GRE: Some universities have minimum entrance requirements that are separate from those of their individual programs. SO, if you have, for example, stellar verbal sills and minimal math skills and the university has a certain set requirement for math skills (even if the program in which you want to study doesn't), you won't get in. Just so you're not blindsided....

One other thing to consider (congrats on the Hopkins, OP!), some graduate programs pretty much only look at candidates from a specific tier of schools. If you're not from one of what they consider to be the top undergrad programs, you don't have much of a shot at admissions unless you have some pretty stellar credentials. It's not a universal thing, but I've seen it firsthand - people from small regional universities applying to "Hotshot U. Grad Program" and their files being put in the "no way" pile without even a glance. Research the school and program you want to get into before applying, including their placement rates and where they draw their pool of students out of.