How important is quantitative part of GRE?

Discussion in 'General Distance Learning Discussions' started by dcv, May 16, 2005.

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  1. dcv

    dcv New Member

    I'm curious how much weight a graduate sociology department would give to the quantitative part of the GRE.

    I think I can probably score in the 99th percentile of the verbal section, and expect to do well in the analytical writing section. At the moment however, barring any miracle, I'd probably be lucky to land in the 50th percentile in the quantitative section.

    I'll probably be applying to the University of Kansas grad school, if that's pertinent.

    Anyone have any idea? Am I going to have to study math? :eek:
     
    Last edited by a moderator: May 16, 2005
  2. Ted Heiks

    Ted Heiks Moderator and Distinguished Senior Member

    Liberal arts programs are going to place a much higher priority on your verbal score than your quantitative score. For the record, when I took the GRE in 1984, I scored an 80h percentile on the verbal section and a 71st percentile on the quantitative section. That was with one freshman math class, by the way.
     
  3. William H. Walters

    William H. Walters New Member

    For sociology, it's likely to depend on the quantitative-qualitative emphasis of your department and on your own research plans. I'm not familiar with the program at Kansas, but nearly all the specialties listed on their web site (http://www.ku.edu/~socdept/graduate/#programs) are areas in which good research can be done within a mainly qualitative framework. (Economic sociology is probably the exception.)

    On the other hand, there are particular research questions that do require a good knowledge of the statistical techniques that are most often used -- the intro course plus one or two others.

    Overall, though, I'm guessing that Kansas will put more emphasis on the verbal score than the quantitative score.
     

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