The invention provides arrays for analysis of compromised nucleic acid samples, for example, nucleic acids obtained from formalin fixed paraffin embedded samples and methods to analyzed these compromised samples. Arrays are disclosed in which the probe selection region used to select probes for the array is the 300 bases of the target MRNA that are immediately upstream of the start of the poly(A) tail of the mRNA. The probes selected for the array are more biased toward the 3' end of the mRNA than other arrays that are currently available.