I just checked and the SAT is 150 (barring any fees for changing dates / reporting scores / getting your scores early)

I'm not sure which is worse, ETS for draining money from kids or the predatory Princeton Review folks who make it seem like you need to pay them thousands of dollars to do "well" on the SAT. I'd much rather they both went away...

From what I've seen of graduate school, the most important factors for success are passion for the subject area, hard work, intelligence, and a strong sense of direction and self-discipline.

My study strategy and scores for the GRE (taken two years ago, I think) reflect none of that. I bought a review book. I reminded myself of the piddly little rules that I had forgotten since I had taken the SAT, then pitched the book across the room because it was boring. I took the test a week later, and made a good enough score that it hasn't held me back from anything I've applied for since.

My field does not have a GRE subject test, so it felt exactly like taking the SAT all over again, but for graduate school this time. How completely pointless-- I already got into undergrad by doing well on this test, and now you want to make me do it all over again?

As for who is worse, I will put my money on the "college consultants" who charge tens of thousands of dollars to "help" people get into the college of their choice after selectively choosing the students who are most likely to get in to begin with. But don't get me started on that. If we at AoPS were evil, we'd all be driving Ferraris by cashing in on that scam...

One reason the GRE costs so much more than the SAT: because the ETS has a monopoly on the graduate school market. Competition from the ACT restrains the ETS from pricing the SAT higher. There's no such competition for the GRE: it's the only game in town for PhD admissions.

If ETS were officially a "for-profit" enterprise, it might well be subject to greater anti-trust sanctions.

Check out this quote from the NYT:

Within the education world, the Educational Testing Service's nonprofit status also conveys a legitimacy not accorded commercial rivals.

Complaints from commercial competitors that E.T.S. had an unfair advantage grew so insistent in the late 1950's that the Internal Revenue Service conducted a three-year review of the organization's finances. In a 1962 letter, the tax agency agreed that the company was a legitimate nonprofit organization because its primary goal remained educational. To safeguard its status, E.T.S. later hired Mortimer Caplin, a former I.R.S. Commissioner, as one of its Washington lawyers.

Hmmm, AoPS goal is primarily educational. By the same logic, AoPS should get non-profit status too. Maybe if you hired a former IRS Commissioner as one of your lawyers, you could get the same status and have the same lavish surroundings as ETS:

Its lush 360-acre property is dotted with low, tasteful brick buildings, tennis courts, a swimming pool, a private hotel and an impressive home where its president lives rent free.

http://www.nytimes.com/1997/09/30/us/testing-giant-exceeds-roots-drawing-business-rivals-ire.html?n=Top/Reference/Times%20Topics/Organizations/E/Educational%20Testing%20Service&pagewanted=2

When I was on the PhD admissions committee for NYU computer science, we did look at GRE general scores as well as GRE subject scores (in computer science or math) when available. The main purpose was to screen out weak candidates. When you've got hundreds of applications to read, from varied universities throughout the world, you come to appreciate a uniform if imperfect filter.

I've also served on graduate admissions committees in public policy and public administration at Harvard, and we also have gotten applications from all over the world. The grading schemes were sometimes very hard to interpret (e.g., grading is on a 1 to 7 scale, but unclear from the translated transcript which end of the scale is high!)

So I can completely relate to Ravi's point about the need for a quick and easy preliminary screening mechanism.

But the GRE general test really tells you nothing that the same student's SAT's didn't already tell you.

So why not let students save a lot of money by resubmitting their SATs, instead of shelling out a lot of money for GREs. (Arguably if the applicant has been out of college a long time, perhaps they should retake the SATs, but even if they do that, it's a lot cheaper than taking the GREs.)

My view of GREs is that they are the "Emperor's New Clothes" of standardized tests. More expensive than SATs, but actually even a bit less informative than SATs.

GRE general test is math is actually easier than SAT reasoning in math. The GRE has taken out some of the more advanced algebra/trig type questions that appeared on the SAT and replaced them with questions about interpreting different kinds of graphs (pie charts, line graphs, bar charts, etc.)

The time and money that students spend to take GREs is a colossal waste. Virtually all of them have already taken SATs. Including transportation to/from, test fees, prep books, time lost from work or other valuable pursuits, GRE cost is easily 200 dollars a person. Multiply 200 by the number of applicants to grad school each year, and you are talking a LOT of money. Some applicants, especially those overseas, spend even more than 200 dollars because they live far away from a testing site and need to pay for overnight accommodations, etc.

The redundancy of GRE vs. SAT tests reminds me of the high cost of repeated tests in medicine. Docs could easily reuse certain somewhat older blood test results in some cases--if only they could access the records. But the way things are set up now, it's often cheaper just to order a new blood test.

Same seems to be true in education.

When I applied to grad school, professors told me that unless your GRE scores are really bad, math departments don't care.

We actually had a discussion on this at SUMaC this summer. I think it was ComplexZeta who put it this way: "If your recommenders say you're at least as good as Gauss, and your GRE is at the 60th percentile, something's wrong. Other than that..."

(Aside: Someone else then pointed out that Gauss could not have scored in the 60th percentile on the GRE, as he did not speak English.)

I doubt that would have slowed him down on the math portions of the test...

It might actually. I have some foreign students who are very strong in math, but have trouble with easy questions on the SAT Math section because of their English proficiency.