GRE retake?

[ny1020]

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I just took the GRE for the first time this weekend and I'm not sure if I should retake: V 570 M 800. I know the combination of 1370 is ok, but I'm worried about the breakdown - I know V 640 M 730 would look better. Assuming my writing score is decent, do you guys recommend a retake? I memoried hundreds of vocab words for this test, but I can try to do more.

Thanks for your help!

 

[Therapist4Chnge]

Ideally you'd have at least 600 for each, but your combined isn't bad. If you have the time to brush up a bit (take every practice test you can get your hands on for the V part), then I don't think it would hurt.

How is the rest of your application? If you have a strong app besides this, I wouldn't worry too much. Also, check on the cut off scores of where you are applying, some are more strict than other swith their minimums.

-t

 

[irish80122]

I got 6 interviews and an offer with a 550V 790M so I think you will be fine, if my experience is any indication. Then again, I had a lot of research experience and good grades. If your application is solid, I think that will serve you just fine...even though I am angry that you beat my math score 🙂.

 

[ny1020]

Thank you for your replies!

 

[jcam17]

I have a retake question as well. I have already gotten through princeton review's wordsmart for the GRE book that has 850 words as well as Kaplan's vocab cards that have 500 words. There is some overlap so I think I've probably gotten through about 1000-1100 words. I plan to take the test in about a month. Do you guys think I would be better off trying to learn some roots during the remainder of my study time, or focusing on learning as many more words as I can? I could try both as well, but learning roots will take away from learning vocab. Thanks guys you are always a great help!

 

[bellecalle]

Hi everyone! I'm new here.. well, I've been lurking for a bit, but now I actually have a legitimate question that I think some people may be able to give me some input on. And it's also concerning retaking the GRE.

I took mine in August and got a 590 on verbal and 720 on the quant. I received my actual score report in the mail yesterday and saw that I got a 5.0 on the writing portion..

I understand there is a huge disparity between my two scores, and 590 on the verbal was much lower than what I was averaging on the practice tests. So then I registered to retake them to try to get that a bit higher. HOWEVER, when I got my score report yesterday, I saw that 590 on the verbal was actually in the 83rd percentile, which isn't so bad.

So how important is percentile in GRE scores? Do they matter? Or do PhD programs only really look at the score itself?

Thanks!

 

[Duckygirl]

Do you guys think I would be better off trying to learn some roots during the remainder of my study time, or focusing on learning as many more words as I can? I could try both as well, but learning roots will take away from learning vocab. Thanks guys you are always a great help!

Jcam- I don't think spending all that time studying the roots is worth it. If you learned a lot of roots in another way, say you studied Latin for years, that knowledge of roots could really help. However, it has been my experience in taking the test, however, that when you have only a short amount of time to answer each question (and obviously you have to devote more of the lion's share of time to answering the reading comprehension questions), trying to put the roots of a word together to maybe come up with the right meaning or gist of a word, is too time consuming. I think you're just better off studying more words. I think it's best spending your time organizing the words you know into lists of synonyms- you would get a more practical sense of roots that way. The concept of remembering roots is harder anyway- you can do a lot more memory-trick messing around with whole words than you can parts of words. You are right that root-studying would take away from your time with your vocab, and I haven't ever felt like it's been worth it. Good luck!

So how important is percentile in GRE scores? Do they matter? Or do PhD programs only really look at the score itself?

Bellecalle- I think if you looked at the admission statistics of most of the country's clinical psych programs, you would see they quote statistics and requirements in terms of scores. I would say the exception to this (that I know of) is that some of the Canadian schools cite cut-offs and whatnot in terms of percentiles...i.e. a Canadian school might say they expect a clinical applicant to have scores above the 85th percentiles. In you case, I wouldn't worry too much either way. I don't think the disparity is a huge deal either- your verbal score isn't horrific, you just scored way higher in math, which most schools will value. Hope that helps.