The GRE (with a 2020 update)

GRE scores are required with most applications to graduate school. You must (MUST!) study for the GRE because you can improve your quantitative score dramatically even if your math skills are good (even very good), and the quantitative scores are what science faculty look at first. And despite the GRE's shortcomings, the majority of faculty looking at graduate applications give the scores A LOT of weight. The verbal scores are frankly less important (to me and some other faculty, even at large research universities) because it better reflects an applicant's economic background (and, of course, whether an applicant is a native English speaker), and tells us nothing about your ability to write. If I want to know if an applicant can write (and if they're savvy), I look to their e-mails to me and to their statement of purpose.

October 2020 update: There is no statistical correlation between GRE scores and success in graduate school. According to this article in The Atlantic, student performance on the GRE correlates more closely to a combination of factors that includes access to expensive test prep courses and other educational opportunities that prepare students for the test, and even the "student’s own insecurities regarding race and gender." A UCSF study showed that success in graduate school is better predicted by letters of recommendation from faculty advisors who know the student well, and the amount of research experience the applicant already has under their belt.

The Earth & Climate Sciences Department at SF State has joined the growing ranks of geology/Earth science departments that have ended the practice of requiring GRE scores be submitted with grad school applications. Many universities have ended this requirement; some make reporting your GRE scores optional which makes the choice of whether or not to report your scores a new kind of problem (I advise against it unless your scores are top tier). It is not yet universal, but the number of programs adopting this new policy is growing particularly following the impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic. Of course, letters of recommendation aren't a perfect means of evaluation. A 2016 study in Nature Geoscience showed that women are "significantly less likely to receive excellent recommendation letters than their male counterparts" and the length of letters written for women are much shorter.

There is no easy fix here. Faculty in the Earth & Climate Sciences Department at SF State have started to use evaluation rubrics for hiring new faculty to avoid implicit bias. I think it's time to start using a similar rubric to evaluate graduate program applicants... and without a column for GRE scores!