GRE Subject Tests

[irnbru]

Sure it sounds great... take 1 test and get a year of credit. But do you realize how difficult the subject GRE exams are? You are graded against a bunch of people trying to get into PhD and MS programs, and many have undergraduate degrees in the field, and usually 3.0+ GPAs. I am speaking from experience - I knew a ton of Psychology, helped a bunch of students study. I got a 37% on the Psych GRE, no credit.

This is very good advice. After studying for and sitting the Psyche GRE in November if I had to do it again I would have taken classes and worked through individual exams. Less people are sitting the Subject GRE tests these days as it is becoming more of an optional test for entrance to masters and phd/psyd programmes. Coupled with an economic climate which might encourage students to stay in college in order to get higher qualifications while riding out the job market, the tests are getting massively more competitive. What was an 80th percentile scaled score five or even two years ago is less than that, now.

On the plus side, thanks to the helpful information from other test takers who sat the psychology GRE (I'm looking primarily at the inspirational Alissaroot, here ) I made a scaled score of 750 which is currently at the 93rd percentile in last month's test. Additionally, for any students who enrolled with Excelsior before 1st Sept, if you sit a Subject GRE this coming April and get the required score, any additional upper level courses/exams you sit will NOT be duplicated by the GRE.

This is great news as it means a student can multiply the effect of 30 credits in psychology with a good GRE score and still get extra credit for graded classes if thereafter looking to prepare a suitable transcript for postgraduate applications.