The GRE in Public Health Admissions: Barriers, Waivers, and Moving Forward

In the wake of COVID-19, there is an urgent need for a diverse public health work force to address problems presented or exacerbated by the global pandemic. Educational programs that create our work force both train and shape the makeup of access through graduate applications. The Graduate Record Exam has a number of standing issues, with additional barriers created by the pandemic. We trace the GRE waiver movement over several years, focusing on the gradual adoption in CEPH accredited programs and the rapid expansion of temporary waivers as a response to testing access. Going forward, we need to consider gaps in waivers during the pandemic and how this data can be used to shape our future use of the GRE.

Eleven strategies for getting into graduate school in ecology & evolutionary biology

Getting into graduate school can be tough if you have not done your homework. I outline eleven strategies for increasing your chances of successfully being accepted into an ecology or evolutionary biology lab. Try to get good grades as an undergraduate, do well on the Graduate Record Exam (if applicable), join a lab reading group or undertake an undergraduate thesis, take time to forge relationships so you can have strong reference writers, obtain relevant work experience, author a publication, read peer-reviewed literature, attend national meetings, come up with some good research ideas, develop a relationship with a potential advisor, and apply to at least ten schools. If you follow these strategies, you have a high probability of getting into graduate school in ecology and evolutionary biology.

Contribution of Degraded Perception and Insufficient Encoding to Decisions to Mass or Space Study

How do learners decide whether to mass or space an item during study? Results from Son (2004) indicate that these decisions are influenced by the degree to which an item is judged to be encoded sufficiently during an initial study episode, whereas others ( Toppino, Cohen, Davis, & Moors, 2009 ) have proposed that degraded perceptual processing contributed to participants’ decisions to mass or space study. To reconcile these conflicting conclusions, the current experiments used eye tracking technology to evaluate the contribution of degraded perception and insufficient encoding on learners’ study decisions. Participants studied synonym pairs from the graduate record exam (GRE) that varied in item difficulty for 1 s (Experiment 1) or 5 s (Experiment 2) each while their eye movements were recorded. Participants then decided whether to mass, space, or drop each pair in future study. For pairs that were never fixated, and hence not perceived, participants overwhelmingly chose to mass their study, presumably so that they could read the target. For pairs that were processed sufficiently to be perceived, preference for massing and spacing pairs increased with item difficulty (i.e., both increased as pairs became less likely to be fully encoded). Taken together, these data demonstrate a contribution of degraded perception and insufficient encoding for learners’ decisions to mass (or space) their study.

The Mozart Effect: Evidence for the Arousal Hypothesis

This study investigated the effect of music listening for performance on a 25-question portion of the analytical section of the Graduate Record Exam by 72 undergraduate students ( M age 21.9 yr.). Five levels of an auditor condition were based on Mozart Piano Sonata No. 3 (K. 281), Movement I (Allegro); a rhythm excerpt; a melody excerpt; traffic sounds; and silence. Participants were randomly assigned to one of the stimuli. After a 5-min., 43-sec. (length of the first Allegro movement) listening period, participants answered the questions. Analysis indicated participants achieved significantly higher mean scores after all auditory conditions than those in the silent condition. No statistically significant pairwise mean difference appeared between scores for the auditory conditions. Findings were interpreted in terms of an arousal framework, suggesting the higher means in all auditory conditions may reflect immediate exposure to auditory stimuli.

Explaining Performance on P&P versus Computer Mode of Administration for the Verbal Section of the Graduate Record Exam

The present study attempted to find the effects of trait and computer anxiety upon performance on paper-and-pencil and computer forms of verbal sections of the Graduate Record Examination. Scores for neuroticism, extraversion, computer anxiety, GRE via paper-and-pencil, and GRE via computer were collected for forty college undergraduates. Analyses revealed significant interactions for computer anxiety and extraversion with test mode. Contrary to the hypothesis, results found extraverts and those scoring low in computer anxiety obtained significantly lower scores on the computer version than their counterparts. Explanations for the findings and implications for future research are discussed.

Sex Differences in Prediction of Academic Performance by the Graduate Record Exam

The relationship between Graduate Record Exam (GRE) scores and graduate grade-point average (GPA) for Caucasian men and women in a Master's program in counseling was investigated. Scores on neither the Quantitative nor the Verbal scales of the GRE were correlated with GPA for men, but Quantitative scale scores were significantly correlated with GPA for women.

Admissions Criteria and Later Performance: Graduate Record Exam, Miller's Analogies, and GPA as Predictors of Professional Competency

The Graduate Record Exam, Miller's Analogies, and GPA have long been used as composite parts of admissions requirements to graduate schools in psychology. Questions have been raised about the predictive validity of these standardized scores for performance in professional schools. 58 graduate students in the Hahnemann Psy. D. program were followed, comparing their three scores submitted on admission to their scores achieved in a course in Rorschach scoring. The relationship between performance in the course and these standardized measures was not significant. The three scores did not predict achievement of Rorschach scoring skills. Limitations of the present study are discussed with reference to the need for more research relating entrance requirements to specific competencies.