Abstract
The association between GRE scores and academic success in graduate programs is currently of national interest. GRE scores are often assumed to be predictive of student success in graduate school. However, we found no such association in admission data from Vanderbilt's Initiative for Maximizing Student Diversity (IMSD), which recruited historically underrepresented students for graduate study in the biomedical sciences at Vanderbilt University spanning a wide range of GRE scores. This study avoids the typical biases of most GRE investigations of performance where only high-achievers on the GRE are admitted. GRE scores, while collected at admission, were not used or consulted for admissions decisions and comprise the full range of percentiles from 1% to 91%. We report on the 29 students recruited to the Vanderbilt IMSD from 2007-2011 who have completed the program as of summer 2017. While the data set is not large, the predictive trends between GRE and long-term graduate outcomes (publications, first author publications, time to degree, predoctoral fellowship awards, and faculty evaluations) are remarkably null and there is sufficient precision to rule out even mild relationships between GRE and these outcomes. Career outcomes are encouraging; many students are in postdocs, and the rest are in stage-appropriate career environments for such a cohort, including tenure track faculty, biotech and entrepreneurship careers.
- Posted July 20, 2018.
