I'm a foreigner (being English), and I found the verbal section of the GRE had questions that didn't make sense to me, for purely cultural reasons. It wasn't quite on the level of the sub-$1000 questions on Who Wants to be a Milliner, which basically test whether you grew up in the US, but it wasn't far off.
That said, my personal experience makes me worry about this (from the original post):
"when one is entering a grad program, they should have a) done well in undergrad, b) have demonstrated a capacity to conduct effective research, and c) ability to write well."
I got taken on despite (a) being untestable (there being no clear equivalence in undergrad grading norms between the US and UK) and (b) being irrelevant to my undergrad (though not the grad course I was applying to). The only thing I could fall back on, really, was writing well, and the only evidence for this was my Statement of Purpose and my GRE score. I fear that using the criteria mentioned here I might have been worse off, as a foreigner, than under the current scheme.
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Posted by Anonymous to academicsecret at 9/30/2006 07:47:37 PM
