04/2001 MEMO: Graduate Record Examination Requirement for Admission
Updated: June 1st, 2011
Office of the Dean
Graduate Division
University of California, Berkeley
April 26, 2001
TO: Chairs and Head Graduate Advisers
FROM: Joseph J. Duggan, Associate Dean
SUBJECT: Graduate Record Examination Requirement for Admission
At its meeting of April 16, 2001, the Graduate Council approved a proposal from the Graduate Division that the General Test of the Graduate Record Examination (GRE) become a departmental option. Previously the Graduate Council had required the General Test of the GRE of all applicants for graduate admission.
Effective with applications submitted for Fall 2002, departments may determine their GRE requirement. You may choose to require the General Test, or an alternate test such as the MCAT or GMAT, or no standardized test at all. With very few exceptions, most departments currently give the General Test some weight in the admission decision, among a series of criteria that differ from field to field.
This change in procedure affects in no way the status of GRE Subject Tests in those fields in which they are offered, since the Subject Tests have always been a departmental option.
Please be sure that the test requirements your department or group establishes are clearly reflected in your informational materials and on your Web site.
The Graduate Division will henceforth leave to departments and graduate groups the monitoring of GRE scores, including the length of time a score can be accepted. We will continue to maintain the database of scores for access by departments, and we will continue to provide to departments the cumulative reports of scores sent to us from the Educational Testing Service. The Educational Testing Service does not report scores that are older than 5 years. Because of this, and the large number of scores we receive, scores older than 5 years will be purged from the database in early fall each year.
We hope that this change of policy will provide departments with greater flexibility and with more control over the admission process. Exceptions to policy will no longer have to be requested from the Graduate Division, as each department or graduate group will be able to decide on whether to grant exceptions to its own policy.
cc:
Professor Michael Hanemann
Carol Soc
Graduate Assistants
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