VALIDITY OF GRE® GENERAL TEST SCORES FOR ADMISSION TO COLLEGES OF VETERINARY MEDICINE

Abstract

This paper documents a case study of the validity of the Graduate Record Examinations (GRE®) General Test in a comprehensive sample of veterinary medical colleges. Extensive and complete data available from these schools allowed us to control several artifacts that are typical of “one-shot” validation studies and thus enabled a relatively definitive assessment of the test's validity. Overall undergraduate grade point average (GPA), undergraduate GPA in the last 45 hours of courses, and GRE verbal, quantitative, and analytical scores were examined individually and in combination for their ability to predict success in veterinary school. For each of 16 veterinary medical colleges, statistical methods were applied to correct for the effects of range restriction in the predictors and unreliability of the criterion, and the results were summarized across all schools. When corrections were made for both range restriction and unreliability, the resulting validity coefficients (median multiple correlations) were.53 for three GRE scores, when used together;.56 for overall undergraduate GPA; and.72 for GRE scores and overall undergraduate GPA considered together. Adding GRE scores to undergraduate GPA increased the amount of variance explained, on average, by about 18% – a proportion that can be regarded as being “medium” to “large.”.