Would creating an online flash card deck for GRE study help overcome a weak TOEFL score?

Question

My TOEFL score is 85, but the minimum requirement of the school I'm applying to is 90. My GRE verbal score is also not very good. However, I have dedicated a month to contribute to the community of people studying for the GRE (more specifically, I have built a well-designed and information-rich Anki deck). Here is what I can sell in the SOP (they are the last two paragraphs of the What are you working on now? part):

Once complete I posted it on my website, and the result is incredible. Every month there are approximately a hundred visitors visit my site to download it, and within a couple months this popularity has pushed my site to the front page of Google*. Another good news for me is that I haven't forgotten a single word since.

Although my TOEFL or GRE score might not be high yet, the scores themselves don't reflect everything. After all, English should be a medium to communicate, not the opposite. I plan to upgrade the deck to make the it more consistent in the future.

But I'm worried that my application will be screened out before the SOP is read. Even if it is read, after all I built it to learning GRE vocabulary, not to training speaking or listening (my speaking score is only 18). I can take another TOEFL exam, but I want to make sure that my English has improved enough so that the money spent to retake it will not be wasted. It should technically not be a problem, if the deadlines are not coming.

My questions are:

• In schools that care about the scores, is there a way to make the committee read the SOP first? Like the professor I'm following sending an email to them to rescue me?
• After that, do my scores still matter?
• I also have created a deck just for the speaking test, but haven't published yet because I still can improve it. And if I explain that I have generate a feasible, scientific plan to improve my English, with studies back up in psychology and/or neurosciences, would this helps? The only thing it needs is time.

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_{* Just google gre anki
Related questions:
• Do admissions care how close a TOEFL score is to the minimum?
• Why do universities place a weight on GRE/TOEFL scores?}

Answer 1

English competency is not a field in which you can earn "extra credit." While it is possible that a graduate program may be moderately impressed by your enthusiastic creation of study materials (but you can't count on this: as a data point, I had never heard of an "anki deck" until now), such activities certainly do not directly compensate for low TOEFL scores.

No one can speak for every graduate program at once, but in my professional opinion your low TOEFL scores will prevent you from getting serious consideration for admission in most US graduate programs. For instance, you can see my own university's requirements here. Your overall TOEFL score meets our requirements but your speaking score does not, which means that you would not be able to be admitted as a graduate student in my department. Moreover the speaking requirements for TAs are significantly higher: see here. The TOEFL speaking test is truly difficult for many foreign students, and your score is low enough so that admissions faculty would have serious concerns that you would never be able to get it high enough in order to be a TA, which is a significant source of funding in our department. We could perhaps carry one or two graduate students on grading-only assignments, but not many. Moreover, in my field (mathematics) getting a PhD with no teaching or TAing experience whatsoever would be a significant -- perhaps crippling -- disadvantage in the academic job market (as usual, there are a tiny number of exceptions here).

To address your precise questions:

In schools that care about the scores, is there a way to make the committee read the SOP first?

Most (or all) schools I know will care about the scores. No, there is no way to make the committee read the SOP first. Nor do I see any significance in the order your application is read.

After that, do my scores still matter?

What? Of course they do. I think you've been told this before in response to other questions, and I don't want to pile on too heavily, but: you seem to have some very serious misconceptions about the way academia works. You seem to often generate "strategies" for doing things in a nonstandard way or for circumventing requirements. If you want to get into a graduate program in the US and be a successful academic, you really need to stop doing that. You need to learn what the requirements are and acquire at least some understanding of why they're there, and then you need to fulfill the requirements, not sidestep them or talk your way out of it. The honest truth is that your excerpted, proposed statement of purpose would not help your case at all but in fact would make a distinctly negative impression. You don't understand the English proficiency requirements very well at all if you think that making a popular set of vocabulary flash cards is relevant to fulfilling them. It simply isn't. Most of all, your proposed improvement is to make more vocabulary flashcards...but this is a poor diagnosis of the problem. You need to improve your speaking score substantially -- by at least 8 points (out of a total of 30) to be able to take on TA duties in my university. If you raise your speaking score by that much, your total score will meet minimum requirements at most departments I'm aware of.

One final tip: I know exactly one way to use your personal statement to ameliorate commmittees' opinions of your speaking and writing skills -- namely, make sure your personal statement is a flawless specimen of English writing. Thus, rather than saying that your scores don't reflect your true ability (which is a worthless thing to say; we understand that various metrics are imperfect and limited, but we are using them anyway in the manner we think best) this shows that, which is much more convincing.

Answer 2

This may not be a direct answer to the question, but I think the fact that the question is asked reflects some basic misunderstanding of TOEFL and GRE.

I want to point out the TOEFL and GRE are two completely different tests designed to assess different aspects of your language skill. TOEFL is a test for people whom English is not the first language, and thus the emphasis of TOEFL is whether the test taker has sufficient mastery of English to survive the day-to-day interaction with other students and professors on a English-speaking campus. GRE, on the other hand, is concerned with your ability to express, analyze, and comprehend at a level demanded in graduate studies. Thus what you have done for GRE probably does little to rescue your low TOEFL score, given that the two tests have fairly different objectives. Moreover, mastering the vocabulary is only the first (albeit necessary) step to ace these exams. Even if you have mastered GRE vocabulary through your contribution, there is still a long way to go before you can use English to express yourself fluently.

As someone who have been studying in the US as an international student, I want to also point out, from my personal experience, that TOEFL is really an easy test. Of course when you first encounter the test as a non-native speaker, the level of English demanded may seem unreasonably high. But don't complain yet, because actually living in an English-speaking environment demands even more. There is really no excuse for a low TOEFL score if you really want to study in the US, no matter how many Anki cards you've made.

Answer 3

Whether a department will read your file if the scores are low depends on the department. My department generally would, but others do not. While your work to help other students studying for the GRE is admirable, it will probably carry very little weight. Your weak English fluency is evident in the title and body of this question, and departments may find your dismissal of language competence in your statement of purpose offputting.

Answer 4

While I believe you're hoping the answer to your question is "no, the scores won't matter," I believe that the real answer is otherwise.

In many cases, minimum TOEFL scores are required by universities to ensure a certain level of competency which may be necessary for credentialing either as a research assistant or a teaching assistant. In the absence of such scores, securing funding may be much more difficult, if not downright impossible.

Moreover, the fundamental issue is that the work that you've done—creating a website for people preparing to take the GRE—does not actually demonstrate familiarity with the English language. All it demonstrates is your ability to code up a website. It's great that it's helped you a bit, but as far as admissions committees are concerned, it's unlikely to sway their decision in your favor.

Also, as far as graduate admissions committees are concerned: no, there's no way to guarantee that they'll read the SOP before looking at your test scores. And yes, the scores will still matter, even if they read the SOP.

Answer 5

This differs between departments, so there's no way to predict what will happen without information about your specific case. In my department, it would be nearly impossible to get admitted with a TOEFL score of 85. It would require an exception to a departmental policy and probably a university-wide policy as well (I'm not sure how flexible that one is, because the departmental policy is stricter). The department has had bad experiences with exceptions in the past, with graduate students who were not capable of teaching undergraduates or even communicating effectively with faculty, and it has been years since the admissions committee was willing to even consider an exception. All students with low TOEFL scores explain that they intend to improve their English, but they do not always do so, so these predictions carry little weight.

In my department your application would be read, but it would be rejected unless you looked absolutely brilliant. Other departments might be more willing to make exceptions or have completely different policies. If you are confident that the departments you are applying to will be flexible, then you don't need to worry, but I don't think you can determine this without specific knowledge.

Although my TOEFL or GRE score might not be high yet, the scores themselves don't reflect everything. After all, English should be a medium to communicate, not the opposite. I plan to upgrade the deck to make the it more consistent in the future.

I don't understand your argument here. You start by saying your scores don't reflect your true ability, then you comment about role of English (what's the opposite of a medium to communicate?), and then you suggest the desk needs to be more consistent and say you will improve it.

This paragraph really isn't making a good case for why the GRE review deck should substitute for higher TOEFL scores. I doubt such a case can be made effectively (the review deck is a nice contribution to the community, but it's not at all the same sort of thing), but if you want to try you'll need to restructure things somewhat.

Answer 6

I think there may be a way to use the web site to help your application, but not by discounting the English requirement as you seem to be trying to do.

I have never been involved, other that as an applicant, in the admissions process, so take this for what it is worth.

Instead, recognize in your SOP that your English skills are not where they will need to be when you start your studies in the USA. The web site can be cited as evidence of the effort you are putting into improving your English. If you plan to take any English language courses between now and when you would start your USA studies, list them as well.

The general position would be "I know I need to improve my English, and these are the things I am doing to achieve that."