Standardized tests work much better than high school grades, and also handle cases like young students who go to university at or before the "normal" age of a high school student.

The SAT and GRE aren't perfect, but they're a massive help to students who would otherwise be outside the normal path. Get a high score on the SAT, and nobody cares whether you went through traditional K-12.

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elashri 6 days ago | parent [-]

> GRE aren't perfect

This is understatement, GRE being required for STEM postgraduate studies was always university requirement for all not something the STEM department would want.

One can argue that the quantitative part have a point but for the language part, you must be kidding me. Unless you are going to English literature it is just plain stupid (maybe even if you study literature).

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DiogenesKynikos 6 days ago | parent [-]

For native speakers of English, the language part of the exam is just seen as a general test of intelligence.

For non-native speakers, it's just a test of how well they learned English, and nobody in admissions expects them to score as well as native speakers.

Beyond this, there are subject-specific GREs. They're far from perfect, but they're more uniformly comparable across all candidates than grades are.

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elashri 6 days ago | parent [-]

Have you actually taken the exam or looked into a sample test?

There is no intelligence in most parts, it is just you memorizing a lot of words that you will never hear or use. Maybe you are confusing different parts of the exam.

> For non-native speakers, it's just a test of how well they learned English, and nobody in admissions expects them to score as well as native speakers.

That's different test/s. Programs will require TOEFL/IELTS for that purpose.

	▲	DiogenesKynikos 6 days ago \| parent \| next [-]
		Yes, I have taken the test in question. The vocabulary is not that difficult. If you regularly read literature as a child and adolescent, you will know most of the vocab in the test. Most people consider reading and having a decent vocabulary as signs of education and intelligence. Beyond that, the verbal GRE is mostly about making connections between different words and concepts - just a test of reasoning ability. TOEFL/IELTS are for a completely different purpose. That's why I said that the verbal GRE is only really meaningful for native speakers. You wouldn't expect someone who learned English as a second language to have the same command over the language as a native speaker. That doesn't mean that they're not smart.
	▲	DoorOpen 4 days ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		There is intelligence. You could take just a few days to prepare to get 95th to 99th percentile while other people take 6 months to prepare.