I had to sell 1000 stickers to fund the GREs — and it took me 2 years

As the pandemic unfolds, many academic programs are thinking of dropping the Graduate Record Examinations (GREs) as a requirement for graduate school applications. Some are considering dropping the GREs indefinitely as it rather correlates with socioeconomic status, race and gender than it does to graduate academic success.

My story is just one of many stories of how the GREs are a financial strain that quite honestly was almost the final straw barring me from applying to graduate school.

I made it only because of some moist stickers.

Three (maybe only two) easy steps to taking the GREs

1. Enroll in study courses (~$1000 CAD/course) or purchase study books (~$30 CAD) for practice
2. Take the GRE course (at the time, it was $150 USD/course; which is equivalent to about $204 CAD in the current currency conversion)
3. (Opt.) If GRE scores weren’t good, retake until happy ($150 USD x number of retakes)

My GRE ride: seatbelts on, we’re in for turbulence

I had been saving to take the GREs since second year of university, starting my redbubble shop in 2014. For each sticker sold, I earned $0.23 CAD. This funded my GREs because I was already spending all of my waking hours in class, being a research assistant, or working to fund my undergraduate degree. The only wiggle room I had for funding anything extra was spending “idle” hours, like commuting, study breaks, lunch breaks, creating for Redbubble.

To afford a $204 CAD GRE test, 887 people had to hop over to my shop and buy dumb stickers that said things like moist and boneless pizza. That was what I had originally budgeted based on earlier currency conversion rates.

I had planned on taking the test in the summer.

But every time I thought I had enough, the Canadian dollar dropped.

To afford the GREs, priced in USD, the Canadian conversion kept going up as the CAD value plummeted.

Please envision how painstaking it was to incrementally earn $0.23 CAD to fill in the incrementally growing price gap. The amount it was growing by was honestly casual to some people — the equivalent to an average dinner or night out.

“Just skip a night out with some friends”, a few suggested, not knowing that I never had the money to do any of those things to begin with.

Thankfully, an additional 113 people did find my silly stationery funny enough to spend money on them. But by that time, the Canadian dollar was so low that I paid $230 CAD for the test. That payment screen is inked into my memory forever.

I could also only take the test once because I didn’t have another 2 years to convince another 1000 people to moisten up their laptop and water bottles with my stationery. I didn’t have any leftover money to buy prep books or attend prep classes, so I scoured the internet and local libraries for free resources. While I found some sample questions for the math and vocabulary sections, I didn’t find any for the essay question.

I went into the test not knowing what it would be like, other than from friend’s descriptions.

I also didn’t get to write the test until October, squishing the entire application timeline up against the December deadline. I didn’t want to reach out just to have to embarrassingly announce that I couldn’t afford the GREs and will have to wait until the next application cycle. I felt like was wasting their time and didn’t reach out until I had my scores.*

When I finally did, I got one reply from a professor who told me sternly that I was reaching out too late, which showed disorganization and lack of dedication.

I saw this same narrative resurface during a new wave of discussions on whether the GREs should be dropped this year as an application requirement due to COVID-19 restrictions. Voices against removing the GRE suggested that it was an indicator of planning and commitment to the graduate process.

*Aside: If you’re in this spot where your finances are the main barrier to applying, I would encourage you to reach out to the profs in a networking sense, just to get your name familiar to them. You don’t have to go into detail about financial issues, or mention them at all, but if you do, their reaction, as well as how they talk about research and other barriers, can be factored into whether you two will be a good fit. Because your choice in this matters too.

If they respond negatively, it might be an indicator of how they might respond if barriers arise in your graduate degree (e.g, pandemic restrictions). It sucks to be rejected or treated poorly, but better before than during your degree.

Well, maybe you should have planned better

For a period I internalized this narrative that maybe I just hadn’t planned early enough, and should have had more of an emergency buffer to address sudden issues like the Canadian dollar plummeting.

Looking back, it wasn’t hard to generate evidence to show that I was dedicated to applying to graduate school, some demonstrable via my CV:

• I started my first research assistant position in second year, and by application cycle I had research experience in four different labs.
• Two of these positions were funded by undergraduate research awards.
• I started studying for the GREs using online resources and old high school math notes in third year.
• I started saving up for the application process and the GREs in second year. I just didn’t expect a global economic decline. I also didn’t have financial support from other sources, and was paying my own undergraduate tuition.

I didn’t just willy nilly decide to apply.

Peers who were able to reach out earlier weren’t necessarily more dedicated, better planners; more likely they had financial support so that money wasn’t a factor in delaying any of the process.

Where do we go from here?

I share my story because research institutions like to throw around statistics, and I do value that as one approach of describing what happens at the group level.

Sometimes those statistics of discrimination are dismissed because decision makers aren’t aware of what those statistics look like, translated into individual lives.

It’s in stories of lived experiences that we understand a late GRE might not have been due to “lack of planning”, but due financial situations that were already mitigated at full effort. It’s hard to understand how something as small as $25 could have been the final straw.

What I hear is that some committees still value the GRE because it shows some kind of initial intent to prepare. I can see why committees value it, and think that future steps should point to finding other ways to measure this same value. Other ways that don’t systematically discriminate based on socioeconomic status, gender or race.

For example, grant applications often have a statement of intent process prior to a full grant application. Could something similar stand in the place of GREs?

That’s only one of many possible suggestions.

I hope that in addressing systemic biases in the graduate application process, we do not stop at dismissing suggestions that don’t work — but rather keep pushing until we have a viable alternate option of addressing the underlying problem.

Tweet me your thoughts!

Also shouting out this twitter thread~