GRE Subject Tests

[Kaz]

This is the first time I've looked at this thread! John Bear's books never mentioned Empire State so I went with Excelsior College when I started all of this back in 1998 (yes, I'm slow!). Now that I know Empire State exists I may be dropping EC like a hot rock...like today. I took the GRE Psychology Subject test exactly once and scored a 500 after reading 16 books and long before I discovered InstantCert. I think it's reasonable to believe that I could have scored much higher if I had kept at it! Wish me luck!

What NAP said and I'll add slow your horses. You rarely hear anyone here talking about Empire for good reason. NAP pointed out the residency requirement. It doesn't matter how many credits you already have and what they are in, you have to take another 30 at Empire if you switch to Empire (I think it might be 32 actually, they might be one of those 128 credit bachelor's programs instead of 120). Also, since you started all this back in 1998 and this thread is about GRE subject tests you need to know that any scores more than five years old are basically unusable. This isn't a rule from these schools. ETS, the company that owns the GRE, won't "maintain" scores older than that. I don't know if they actually ever delete them after five years but they won't forward old scores to any schools, no matter how much you complain.

More importantly, if you've already taken a subject GRE and EC has accepted the score and given you credits for it you are probably already in the best position you could be in to use the subject test. Those credits are locked-in at EC under the policies that were in place when you enrolled as long as you pay your annual student maintenance fee. That means the previously mentioned five year rule has no bearing and even EC changing its policy won't take those credits away from you. I'm in such a position now and it is sweet :coolgleam:.

If you haven't taken any subject test yet then also know that Empire does not publish information regarding what credits it rewards for scores on the subject GREs, but apocryphal info handed down through the forum all seems to agree that Empire is VERY stingy with how many credits it rewards. I've read that in order to get enough credits to completely fulfill a major you need essentially a perfect score, like better than the 96th percentile. It goes without saying that it isn't much of a "plan" if the plan is to get a perfect score. That's just insanely hard.

The only realistic option seems to be Charter Oak, but they have enough differences from EC that all the differences need to be weighed before switching. For instance, the don't give out normal majors, "only" concentrations. Maybe that matters to you, maybe it doesn't, but it should be considered. Also, they don't reward a sliding scale of credits for the GRE nor can you fulfill a major using a GRE, but their minimum score requirement is really low (40%) so you can get a bunch of credits cheap and easy using them.

Any way you go good luck! If you pursue the Empire option please come back and give us a detailed post about it, as you'll be one of the few with that experience.

[Old Rusty Pipe]

It looks like Empire State College finally got around to posting their entire GRE Subject Exam policy. As stated before, they award between 6 credits at the 20th%ile to 36 credits for the 96th%ile. The GRE credit is also an all or nothing thing. You can either take the credit earned by a GRE subject exam OR the courses and other sources of credit in that subject area. So if you took 5 classes of psychology and applied them to Empire State, and then you took the GRE Psychology exam you would have to choose between your GRE score or the five classes you already had. You can't use both. The policy in its entirety can be found here:

GRE Scores and Credit | Degree Planning and Academic Review | SUNY Empire State College

Charter Oak State College acceptance of GRE Subject exam remains unchanged. They appear to accept all GRE Subject Exams but the Biochemistry. A score of the 40th%ile will get you 24 credits for quantitative exams, and 18 credits for non-quantitative.

California Coast University has removed any mention of using the GRE Subject Exams from their website. I haven't contacted them, but I'd interpret the omission as a policy change on their acceptance of them for undergraduate credit.

Anyone planning on taking one of these beasts in the upcoming months?

[Kaz]

It looks like Empire State College finally got around to posting their entire GRE Subject Exam policy. As stated before, they award between 6 credits at the 20th%ile to 36 credits for the 96th%ile. The GRE credit is also an all or nothing thing. You can either take the credit earned by a GRE subject exam OR the courses and other sources of credit in that subject area. So if you took 5 classes of psychology and applied them to Empire State, and then you took the GRE Psychology exam you would have to choose between your GRE score or the five classes you already had. You can't use both. The policy in its entirety can be found here:

GRE Scores and Credit | Degree Planning and Academic Review | SUNY Empire State College

Awesome that they finally put this up for all to see! They do seem very emphatic about how you can't mix credits, very "all-or-nothing". How much would it suck to take the same exam over and over trying to hit that magical 96th%ile and never getting it! banghead:ack::puke: But that page doesn't say anything about using the GRE credits only for a major. Soooo, does that mean you can use GREs to clear non-major requirements?! If you can, THAT would be the most useful thing about ESC being one of the few schools still offering credit for subject GREs. Hitting the 96th%ile on any GRE is crazy hard so you can't really plan on it.

[Old Rusty Pipe]

I contacted Charter Oak State College to try and get some more detailed info on how they apply the GRE Subject Tests. Their entire process of applying the GRE test to the concentration seems to be highly individualized, so they wouldn't go to much into specifics. Of what I did get:

1. The GRE Biochemistry test is NOT accepted for credit.
2. Introductory courses and exams for the GRE Subject Test in question will likely be duplicated.

So if you want to take the GRE Biochemistry, you are stuck with Empire State College.

Next test date is in April. Any takers for undergrad credit?

[Kaz]

So if you want to take the GRE Biochemistry, you are stuck with Empire State College.

Next test date is in April. Any takers for undergrad credit?

I'd eat my hat if someone here did. There were very few of us even trying when Excelsior was still accepting it, and their rules were much easier than Empire's. I'm glad I made it in before they shut the door, the last of a bygone breed :patriot:

[Old Rusty Pipe]

I'd be surprised to find anyone actually taking a GRE Subject Test in April for Charter Oak or Empire State. Even with those schools, it sounds like a great idea. A whole lot of credit for just a little bit of money. Then comes the execution. That much information I imagine is very daunting. I've got a friend taking the Literature in English in April, but he's the only one I expect to see do it. He makes Literature sound like a death sentence these days.

[Kaz]

I made a halfhearted attempt at the Literature GRE: got the ETS book, took a practice test, etc. I was just looking for some easy credits and not really clearing a major at Excelsior. My impression was that it'd be pretty easy to achieve Charter's 40% requirement and that it wouldn't be impossible to get Excelsior's major completed, but I was definitely drawing on my private, college prep high school background in doing so. If I had never had that base to draw on I don't know if I would have even considered it in the first place.

I find the different subjects to be drastically different in difficulty level with respect to the subject GRE. I am finishing a Psych/Math double major at Excelsior. Almost all my psych credits are from the subject GRE and all my math credits are from actual classes. Even with all those math classes under my belt the math subject GRE is still harder for me than the psych GRE lol. I spent less than a year studying for that and cleared the whole major on the second attempt. It was definitively easier in my mind. I could only imagine how hard it must be to self-study from scratch for something like biochemistry, and beat 96% of everyone taking the test, almost all of whom have sat through 12-15 classes in the subject over the last 4-5 years :ack:

[NAP]

This person got so close - GRE Biochem study guide

It makes me wonder, if he is very good at using textbooks to study or if the textbook is somehow a basis for the exam content. Either way, he did an excellent job!

[Yanji]

The natural science (+Mathematics) GREs are pretty much the hardest exam credits out there and Biology is no exception. But if you think about it, plenty on this board have taken or thought of taking the Biology CLEP, which is not an easy test and is only worth 6 credits, while the GRE is worth 24 at COSC. Looking at samples of both exams, while the CLEP is certainly easier than the GRE, I think the GRE has enough softball questions to be a better time investment than the CLEP.

The scoring system for the subject GREs is refreshingly transparent, and based on the December 2006 test results, you need to get around 52% of the questions correct to meet COSC's 40th percentile requirement. The exact score needed changes every year depending on the distribution, but the data points are very dense in this part of the curve, so ~55% should be pretty much safe any year. Considering all the questions are multiple choice out of 5, that's essentially a free 20%, and since Biology is pretty much just memorization, I'm pretty sure you could brute force the last 32% of the way with a textbook or GRE study resources. I did the official ETS practice test recently without studying at all and my score percentile was in the low 60s (60% correct). Granted, I do have 9 credits worth of Biology coursework, but the most recent of those was 5 years ago and I got a D. Even if you had to put in double the effort of studying for the GRE than you would have for the CLEP, you would still end up with quadruple the amount of credits, including 9 UL science credits.


If that's too much writing, basically I'm saying that I think the Biology GRE is something more people should consider because unlike other natural science GREs, you can pass Biology just by memorizing individual facts. This obviously isn't going to get you into a ranked MS Biology program, but 24 credits in one shot is still a huge step towards getting a degree.

[Kaz]

If that's too much writing, basically I'm saying that I think the Biology GRE is something more people should consider because unlike other natural science GREs, you can pass Biology just by memorizing individual facts. This obviously isn't going to get you into a ranked MS Biology program, but 24 credits in one shot is still a huge step towards getting a degree.

I more or less agree up to the last sentence. Here is the "problem" with COSC's awarding of credit for the GRE: it looks like it would really help someone who wants a concentration in that subject, but realistically it doesn't help much. The reason is two-fold:

1. the "quantitative" GREs will only fulfill two-thirds of the credit requirements for a Concentration and the non-quantitative fulfill only half
   
2. almost no other college will recognize subject GRE scores as "good enough" for waiving of prerequisites for upper level courses
   

Those two things together create the problem: you clear two-thirds of a concentration with one GRE test, but that final third will require several upper level courses that you will have to take at a school other than COSC, and that other school most likely will not consider your GRE test as "good enough" to waive the pre-reqs for whatever you want to take. It is further complicated by any labs that are needed.

Example: biology. You take the bio GRE and get, say, 63% or so. Nice! You get 24 credits in biology (15 LL/9 UL). Now you need another 12 credits, all UL, that include 2 UL lab courses. In order to fulfill that you have to take the courses at some other college and practically speaking distance, upper level labs are tough to come by on their own, but additionally you have to get all of the pre-reqs waived as a non-degree seeking student based off of a 63% subject GRE score. No mean feat.

Granted, almost no one tries this, so we have very little data to draw on in this forum for this scenario. If we found one or two colleges that are amenable to this scenario and several users here had success attempting this then we would have a pretty cool option here. As it stands now however very, very few people go the subject GRE route anymore since Excelsior changed its policy, so I doubt we ever get such data.

It isn't helped by the fact that COSC doesn't have majors in any of the subjects covered by the GREs, only concentrations. I imagine few people want to kill themselves on the chem GRE, then scour the digital countryside searching for multiple upper level chem labs, only to be rewarded with a bachelor's in "general studies" :ack: