Graduate Record Examination GRE Aptitude Test

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Graduate Record Examination (GRE) Aptitude Test
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Graduate Record Examination (GRE)

• One of the most commonly used tests for
  graduate-school entrance about 500,000 students
  take the general GRE each year (NY Times, Oct 18,
  2005)
• Consists of three types of tests
• (1) Verbal (multiple choice questions such as
  analogies, sentence completion, reading
  comprehension)
• (2) Quantitative (multiple choice arithmetic
  reasoning, geometry, algebra)

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Graduate Record Examination (GRE) (cont.)

• (3) Analytical reasoning (used to be multiple
  choice problem solving involving ordering now
  consists of two essay questions
  analyze/articulate an argument)
• Administered on a computer and takes about 2
  hours to complete
• Scores are standardized so that the mean score is
  500 and standard deviation is 100

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Validity of GRE

• Consider validity studies that attempt to
  correlate GRE scores with actual performance in
  graduate school and later achievement (e.g.,
  marks, number of publications, success obtaining
  academic positions, and so forth)
• Such a correlation attempts to predict later
  achievement with the GRE score, and therefore is
  an example of predictive criterion validity

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Validity of GRE (cont.)

• Consider if the correlation was equal to
• 0
• .2
• .5
• What proportion of the variance in graduate
  school marks would be explained by GRE score in
  each of these cases?

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Validity of GRE (cont.)

• Doesnt measure the following
• Motivation
• Persistence
• Interest level
• Ability to work with others
• Health
• Resilience
• Conscientiousness
• Why not measure conscientiousness (for example)?