Hi! I'm new to this community, but I was wondering if anybody knows what GRE lit scores are considered competitive for PhD programs in English Lit
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From the Berkeley English Department: "There are no minimum GRE scores but those admitted score, on average, in the 700s (97%) in the Verbal test and 650 (88%) or higher in the Subject test."
From the Harvard GSAS website on the English PhD: "High scores in the Verbal (700) and Subject test (650, i.e., English & American Literature) are positive additions to the application but are by no means the most important aspect of one’s candidacy. (The Quantitative and Analytical scores carry less weight than the Verbal and Subject scores.)"
I'm also going for English Lit. Most of the "top schools" that do post stats tend to show...
General GRE: -680 is the unofficial "suggested min." score (though they WILL consider applications below it)
-however, 700 (or sometimes 710) is often the "average" score of accepted candidates
(that said, I pulled this information off of 3-4 top-ranked schools. Do note that most schools do not post ANYTHING other than to say that they have no official cut-offs, and consider the apps wholistically)
LIT GRE:
-650 is a good min. goal if you're going for the top schools. 700 is a nice, impressive score, but very difficult to achieve.
GRE lit score is pretty inconsequential unless you struggled real bad. Only program I know of that even mentions a score (and then qualifies it strongly) is Harvard, and 650.
Thanks for the feedback. I know that this is essentially inconsequential. But being the overworrying panicker (are either of those even words?) that I am, I somehow needed to be reassured that my score wouldn't get me cut before they even looked at my writing. No one I know personally knows anything about the lit application process, so I thought I'd ask here. I'm hoping my writing will get me in somewhere, and the responses here have made me feel silly for worrying in the first place, which, imho, is a very good thing!
The way I see it, the GRE scores are most likely used as an initial cutoff, and I know that my GRE Verbal scores are very strong. My lit score, while I doubt it would make any adcom member say "Wow!" is really not going to hurt me, as it is still above the cutoff indicated by Harvard and Berkeley by a decent-ish margin. Like I said, it was more a matter of reassuring myself of what I subconsciously already knew, I think. This process just makes a person so crazy - I start freaking out in the middle of doing something else about random details. Are you a current applicant, too, or an old hand come back to help us newbies along?
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"There are no minimum GRE scores but those admitted score, on average, in the 700s (97%) in the Verbal test and 650 (88%) or higher in the Subject test."
From the Harvard GSAS website on the English PhD:
"High scores in the Verbal (700) and Subject test (650, i.e., English & American Literature) are positive additions to the application but are by no means the most important aspect of one’s candidacy. (The Quantitative and Analytical scores carry less weight than the Verbal and Subject scores.)"
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General GRE:
-680 is the unofficial "suggested min." score (though they WILL consider applications below it)
-however, 700 (or sometimes 710) is often the "average" score of accepted candidates
(that said, I pulled this information off of 3-4 top-ranked schools. Do note that most schools do not post ANYTHING other than to say that they have no official cut-offs, and consider the apps wholistically)
LIT GRE:
-650 is a good min. goal if you're going for the top schools. 700 is a nice, impressive score, but very difficult to achieve.
Reply
Check out the grelit community.
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(The comment has been removed)
I'm hoping my writing will get me in somewhere, and the responses here have made me feel silly for worrying in the first place, which, imho, is a very good thing!
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(The comment has been removed)
Are you a current applicant, too, or an old hand come back to help us newbies along?
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