What impact does the GRE have on educational equity?
As is the case with most other college admissions tests, large disparities in GRE scores exist between different groups of students. Despite their higher grades as undergraduate and graduate students, females score on average 20-30 points lower than males on each section of the exam. African-American, Latino, and, Native American students on average score lower than White and Asian American students. When test scores play a major role in admissions decisions such gaps create graduate student bodies that are disproportionately White and male. At New York University, bilingual Hispanic doctoral students who scored low on the GRE did outstanding work on a comparable test written in Spanish. Researchers reasoned that because the culturally-laden language of the GRE can lead to score differences, it is crucial to explore alternatives to the GRE for bilingual students.7 One study in the Journal of Negro Education revealed that at the University of Florida Black graduate students with low GRE
