I have a quick question.

Have any of you taken the GRE when applying for an Australian PhD and do you know how it is regarded (if at all) for admission? What other supplementary certificates or honors did you provide when applying?

Hello guys and gals,

I am looking to apply for a PhD in Australia and have just recently started doing my research on the whole application process.

My background is the following: I have a Bachelor of Science in molecular biology from an Austrian (no Kangaroos in Austria) university - 3 years of studies. I did a 1 year internship in a neuroscience research group and currently I am a substitute lab technician in a synthetic physiology group contracted for 1 year, with my own research project.

I had initially started my Masters and was planing to finish it, but job opportunities came up and now, having experienced actual research, I do not want to go back to university exams and lab courses.

The catch is, that I still would like to do a PhD. My degree in and of itself is not equivalent to the Bachelor's with honors that is required by Australian universities and my grades for whatever reason do not really fall within the 10% percentile that are commonly suggested as a minimum for scholarships.

Now I hope that my work experience can compensate for my degree and a standardized test could compensate for my grades. However, as I have come to realize, in contrast to USA, Australian institutions do no require you to have a GRE or GMAT for admission or scholarship consideration. Not only that, but in my correspondence with administrative offices they avoided the subject of GRE like the plague.

So my question to you is, in your experience and opinion are standardized tests at all considered for admission and scholarship applications in Australia?

Any other advice is of course gladly appreciated.

Best regards,
Kris