A senior philosopher at a top 20 PhD program writes:

I was talking to a few grad directors recently, and all report some growing concerns about ongoing effects of no-GRE requirements for Philosophy PhD programs. Any program could require them, but unless a notable-enough number requires them, otherwise promising students might skip applying to the few programs that do require them. (GREs, after all, are inconvenient for those taking them, cost money, etc.) Nobody I know thinks that “good GREs” reflect philosophical promise, or even measure more than good training or at least pre-exam GRE training. Still, the sense is that, in light of lamentable grade and letter inflation, GREs used to serve as a faulty but nonetheless useful filter for programs with large application pools (e.g., 400+), even if the writing sample would serve as the primary criterion for progress in the candidacy process. Now, with inevitably increasing reliance on LLMs etc., the thought is that something like GREs would serve as a useful (though not decisive) filter for cutting down large application pools.

What I am wondering is whether you can raise the idea on your platform. A suggestion that I heard from a number of grad directors was one whereby grad directors could conditionally commit to requiring GREs — where the condition is something like “I — the would-be DGS of Program X — commit to requiring GREs next year if 7 or more other top-20 programs do so” where top-20 is measured by the PGR.

I’m happy for any DGS readers to make the proposed commitment (or to say, “my department would probably adopt the GRE again if X number of other departments did so”), but I would also be interested to hear what other faculty think about this issue. If you post anonymously, please include a real email address (this will not appear) and say something about your PhD or MA program (e.g., “top 50” or “top 20ish) or “ranked M.A. program”).