There's also MCAT, LSAT and GMAT. But GRE or MAT are pretty much the standard for anything other than medical school, law school or business school.
1. Medical school, business school and law school are not graduate schools. They're professional schools. Oh, it may seem like a silly difference, but there's a huge difference in terms of money. 2. Most (if not all) graduate schools do take the GRE and the MAT. 3. Law schools use the LSAT (little as the UC system likes it), business schools use the GMAT and medical schools use the MCAT. The importance of each varies depending on the discipline and which school you're applying to. NYU is notorious for their preference for the LSAT while Berkeley (Boalt) is notorious for swinging in the other direction. (Its not really true, but that's beside the point.) 4. I'm not sure what corresponds to the FE - is the FE required to get a certification of some sort that one is an "egineer"? If so, there's nothing like that in undergard. Lawyers have the bar, doctors have their boards. Business students - well, they don't really go to business school to learn anything anyway. I took a class with a lot of them during law school and their attitude towards class was hilarious.
It's something like you have to take it before you graduate as I said. After you pass it, I believe you have to work for 3 or 4 years under a PE and then take the PE to become a professional. Of course if you go to graduate school direct, then it takes a year or two off your professional training needed. So now that I think about it, I don't think that is something that the graduate schools would look at. I also think its just pass/fail could be wrong about that. GRE sounds like the right thing on the graduate level.
that silly difference is huge, especially in terms of $$ after graduation. I guess you could say things such as the CPA/CIA/CISA, CFA, CFP are all comparable to the FE for certain sectors of the business world. As for business students...I'd have to agree. When your grades aren't going to be reported to any employers/PhD programs, why should you really put forth an effort unless you crave a certain academic distinction? besides, there really isn't that much to learn in b-school. the engineers and scientists all have an incredibly easy time with the finance/accounting formulas, and the rest is pretty much strategy based work where anybody with critical reasoning skills can create opinions. also, if you're doing case study based work, the classroom is the least important workplace for you.
Except for those poor fools like me who are non-trad students and have no prior business background. My first year of law school was much easier than my first year of B-school has been.
Pride- Also without the resume grades are going to have to be my selling point if I want a business internship the summer after this (depending on how my law summer works out this year).