Are GRE Scores Indicative of Student Performance in Graduate School?.

The University of Tennessee at Martin has offered an online Master of Science in Agriculture and Natural Resources since 2001.  Admission to the program is based, in part, on scores from the Graduate Record Exam (GRE).  The objective of this study was to determine if there was a relationship between GRE scores (verbal plus quantitative) and overall grade point average (GPA) in the master’s program.  Two subsets of graduate students were used in the study: those who had successfully graduated and those who had started, but never completed the program.  For the 82 students who graduated from the program, combined verbal plus quantitative GRE scores ranged from 720 to 1280 (mean of 955), mean undergraduate GPA was 3.04, and mean final graduate GPA was 3.69.  Simple linear regression analysis showed that there was a significant (P < 0.001) relationship between final GPA in the master’s program and GRE score, but the R² value was only 0.13, indicating that the relationship was not meaningful.  The linear regression between undergraduate GPA and graduate GPA was also significant (P < 0.05), but the R² value was even lower at 0.08.  Multiple regression using combined GRE score and undergraduate GPA as independent variables improved the R² to only 0.16.  There was no significant relationship between combined GRE score and graduate GPA or between undergraduate GPA and graduate GPA for the 29 students who began the program but did not complete the degree.  In addition, mean GRE score (974) for those who did not complete the degree, was similar to the mean GRE score (955) of those who graduated. Although this study looks only at students who were admitted to the program, the lack of a meaningful relationship between GRE and final GPA in the graduate program indicates that we may need to reconsider admission criteria.