Every so often, someone posts where students in differing majors scored on the ACT or SAT. This is what I spotted online about Graduate Record Exam scores. Somehow those folks in physics are always at the top. As you will note on the bottom of the chart, the scale is just higher and lower. I recall a colleague who was teaching in our social work program, telling me that her graduate advisor asked what she was doing in social work – her GRE scores were so much higher (than the MSW norms).
The scores shown are averages – as the bottom right declares “Mean Intelligence”. Back when I took the GRE, testing alongside me was a woman who was taking it for the third time, needing a 25% score for admission to an Elementary Ed graduate program – and she had already taken, and passed, all the required classes. Nice lady – she kicked my leg twice to wake me up when I fell asleep taking the test (our new puppy arrived the night before and her whining and complaining interfered with sleep.) When my results came in I was relieved – but my GRE percentages were 10 percentage points below my SATs.
Anyway, the chart does demonstrate that not all college graduates are equal, and that some graduate programs are probably less intellectually stringent than others. It isn’t a perfect analysis – for example, some sociology is heavily stats based, while others research in areas where stats are less necessary. Just data – no interpretations.
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