Hello, Does anyone know of any schools that do not use GRE cutoffs or accept candidates with lower GPA?. Please and thanks
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- Thread starter dudenkem
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Gosh. I hope none. These are some of the 'objective' ways that graduate schools determine that an applicant can endure and sustain throughout graduate studies. Quite frankly, graduate school counselors often recommend 1) retaking GREs to improve scores (although I believe lower scores are still reported, but highest scores are taken into consideration), and 2) sometimes earning an Master's degree to compensate for low UG GPAs. The latter is time-consuming, costly, and often doctoral programs may transfer no more than 6 masters-level credits as you earn an additional Master's along the way, but it's important to note that these programs are so competitive because your fellow applicants usually have high GPAs and strong GRE scores...so you do what you have to do to make yourself the most competitive that you can be (...like the Army's old slogan "Be all that you can be."), and see were chips may fall (b/c there's some luck in this process, too).
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Many schools don't use firm cutoffs, as has been stated in another thread on this matter. All do have a minimum threshold however...and this is generally set by the graduate school of the university, not the department. It used to 1000 for almost all graduate schools, but realistically, you weren't getting serious consideration by the psych department unless you were well over 1100. This does NOT mean scores of 1020 were not looked at or thrown in the garbage though. Make sense?
GPA is a very solid predictor of achievement and thus is used by pretty every university in the country as a criteria for admission, and rightfully so. Similar to GRE, there is minimum threshold set by the university, usually between 2.8 and 3.0. Programs often doesn't use "cut-offs"....but mean GPA of competitive candidates is always much higher of course. So, in a sense, the cutoff is set by the candidate pool itself ans waxes and wanes annually.
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There are also ways around a poor GPA. For example, doing a masters program and earning high grades there can help someone overcome a less-than-stellar undergrad record. That's one of the few situations when I actually recommend a👎 (experimental) masters program in psychology. Faculty understand that crap happens in undergrad, whether that is too much partying, mental health issues, taking classes you're not really interested in, etc. BUT grades do demonstrate some commitment to academics, so if you have a low GPA, how will a graduate school, program, or POI have confidence that you can handle the workload?
