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[Analyst2PT]

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Hello All,

First of all, I'd like to thank many of you sharing your pre- and post PT experience in this forum. I have learned much and gained courage to move myself forward. Thank you All.

I didn't want my first post to sound like I'm whining but I am dying to know some of your opinions regarding my GRE scores. I am aware of the sticky thread regarding the GRE scores and acceptance but I'd appreciate if some of you can share your thoughts about my scores.

Undergrad GPA: 3.3
Prereq GPA: to be completed by 2012

GRE:
1st time - 350V 610Q 2.5AW
2nd time - 680V 750Q 3.0AW

I am concerned about my writing score and from what I have seen many of you received 4.0 or higher.

The big question.
Should I retake the exam?

 

[DPoinT]

I think it really depends on the schools in which you are applying to. A lot of DPT programs do not even look at the AW score. Conversely, some require a minimum 4.0, and likewise have an average student score greater than a 4.0 even though they only require a 4.0 for admissions consideration.

It seems that most schools are looking for a 50th percentile average (V450 Q550) on the GRE, so obviously with a 1430 you mowed over that obstacle. Your undergrad GPA is good so I guess I would concentrate more on your prerequisite GPA and the rest of the application processes of whichever schools you are applying to.

Go onto the PTCAS website and look up the schools that you are applying to. Find out if they require a minimum AW score, and if they have an average accepted student score. They post all of the figures on the PTCAS website: http://www.ptcas.org/DirectoryByState.html

 

[markelmarcel]

Wow! 680 in verbal?! Kudos to you!! I couldn't hit 500 even though I took it 3 times!!

The answer is it always depends... if it bothers you enough, you'll take the GRE again...

The first two times I took it I got a 4.5 and then the last time I took it I had memorized a bunch of GRE vocab words and threw some of those in my essays and bam, I got a 5.0! I hardly doubt that was just by chance!!! 😉

Anyway, it IS important that you know how to articulate yourself clearly in written form for school/interviews/PT in general; why do you feel you are getting the lower scores? Have you tried to follow any prep book's suggestions on how to form your essays?

These are all things to consider if you want to re-take... I don't know if I would or not. I know I was really concerned about my GRE verbal score and I took it 3 times to try to get a better score; I didn't really do that much better, but trying made me feel better. So, it's up to you... If you are a perfectionist (like I am sometimes) then you're just waiting for someone to tell you to re-take it; if not, then you're probably just looking for reassurance that you are a good candidate and I would say you probably are (without knowing any of your other stats)

 

[TheOx777]

First of all, I want to congratulate you on the MONSTROUS improvement on your GRE. I was like.....😱! Many schools do set a minimum GRE AW at 4.0, but there are many that do not. I would personally contact all of the schools that you are interested in and find out. You have a solid undergrad gpa and an elite GRE score, thus as long as your pre-reqs and other application ECs are solid you should be fine.

If you have specific schools you are interested in then contact them and let them know your situation. It's better to go in with eyes wide open! Best wishes!

 

[Analyst2PT]

Thank you all.

So, I shouldn't bother applying to schools that require AW4.0?
Or do you guys know anyone who got into schools with AW3.0?

I admit that writing hasn't been my strongest link and doesn't help if you are emailing "Please see attached" all day long at a work place for past 5 years, but I digress.

I honestly don't know if I will be able to handle another GRE because it is such a life sucking exam. I will call up some schools and see how serious they are with AW scores.

Thank you, again. 🙂

 

[Architect2PT]

Congrats on such a huge improvement in your scores. I would not take them over unless there is a specific school that you really want to go to that requires AW 4.0.
Contact the schools you're interested in to find out for sure.
Usually if they say they have a cut off they mean it. So I would not apply to schools with that requirement.
My impression is you can build a strong application for schools that don't have that cutoff.
Good luck!

 

[TheOx777]

I really would not worry about taking it over again. Your Q/V scores were excellent. Unless you have a school that you really really want to go to and they require a 4.0+AW then I wouldn't even bother. Like I and others stated earlier, contact the programs you are interested in and go from there.

 

[pumpkinpatch]

I mostly agree with what others have said so far, however I do not agree that if this is the only thing holding you back from schools that require a 4.0 that you should just not apply. Where you go to school is an important decision, and retaking the GRE is a relatively small hurdle.

Definitely check with the schools you are interested in, and if none of them have that requirement, great. But if any do, make sure it is a careful decision before you just dismiss that school.

 

[Analyst2PT]

Correction.
My undergrad GPA is 3.12. I just received my transcript yesterday....

I called UMDNJ (my first choice) and they have a requirement of AW3.5, but since my verbal score was good she said I'm fine. How much can I trust her?

Supposly I get 3.5~4.0 on my prereq GPA and do massive volunteer hours, I should be fine...right?

ETS - Evil Testing Services.

 

[jlconner2]

Ok. I was reading your thread and honestly I need your advice now!!!

I took the GRE and made a 360 on the verbal portion and a 620 on the quantitative. How on earth did you help your score so much?! I did the study books and the practice tests but I am not a reading comprehension and vocabulary kind of girl. I got the vocab cards and made it through the first 100 of them with about 400 left in the box. Do you think I should go through all of those vocab words memorize them to a tee and then retake it? What is your advice? How did you do it? I need help. I do not want to retake the GRE but after seeing how well you did on the retake I am inspired!!!

Thanks so much!

Jessie

 

[Analyst2PT]

Ok. I was reading your thread and honestly I need your advice now!!!

I took the GRE and made a 360 on the verbal portion and a 620 on the quantitative. How on earth did you help your score so much?! I did the study books and the practice tests but I am not a reading comprehension and vocabulary kind of girl. I got the vocab cards and made it through the first 100 of them with about 400 left in the box. Do you think I should go through all of those vocab words memorize them to a tee and then retake it? What is your advice? How did you do it? I need help. I do not want to retake the GRE but after seeing how well you did on the retake I am inspired!!!

Thanks so much!

Jessie

Hello Jessie,

I was just very nervous when I took it for the first time and I knew that I wasn't going to score high. The intake process, small room, no windows, and 20 video cameras, and wanting to go home was overwhelming. I just wanted to see my score in the end. but I digress.

I had about 7 weeks before I took the exam again June but prior to my first exam I studied the materials everyday for about 8 months, 6-8 hours a day.

Vocabs:
I grouped the words together with similar meanings and memorized the antonyms along with it. This way you can memorize words much more.
For example. obdurate, obstinate, firm, ungovernable, intractable, headstrong, inflexible, refractory
All of these words don't have the same meaning but have similar relationships.

Sentence completions.
I sort of came up with a formula to do this and there is always a hint within a sentence next to blanks. If you are an avid reader this shouldn't be hard for you.

Reading comprehension.
The material they give you is very dry and boring. So, I concentrated on only few types of questions that it will most likely appear in the exam. Almost always you will see a question about author's main idea and something about the details in the passage. This way I will get some right and not all of them wrong. But don't just blind guess on all of the other questions.

Writing.
I, honestly, didn't have enough time to practice on writing since I spent most of the time memorizing vocabs and solving math problems. I have always been a C student in language arts and I knew that I wasn't going improve much on it; hence, the score of 3.

I, also, took courses at Kaplan. It will help you guess better.

Materials.
I bought all kinds of books for the exams but don't buy the materials from the same maker. The questions on practice exams are repeated.

Other tips.
I spent more time on first 15 questions on the actual exam whereas I didn't on the first time. If you can get first 10 to 15 right, then your score will be much higher.

Take practice exams as much as you can. I regularly took the practice exam at least twice a week.

Especially on verbal, do try to eliminate the wrong answers first.

Lastly, I had two cans of Red Bull before the exam to keep me going during the exam.

Are you retaking the exam this month or next month? I only ask because the exam is going to be different.

Best of luck.

 

[jlconner2]

Hello Jessie,

I was just very nervous when I took it for the first time and I knew that I wasn't going to score high. The intake process, small room, no windows, and 20 video cameras, and wanting to go home was overwhelming. I just wanted to see my score in the end. but I digress.

I had about 7 weeks before I took the exam again June but prior to my first exam I studied the materials everyday for about 8 months, 6-8 hours a day.

Vocabs:
I grouped the words together with similar meanings and memorized the antonyms along with it. This way you can memorize words much more.
For example. obdurate, obstinate, firm, ungovernable, intractable, headstrong, inflexible, refractory
All of these words don't have the same meaning but have similar relationships.

Sentence completions.
I sort of came up with a formula to do this and there is always a hint within a sentence next to blanks. If you are an avid reader this shouldn't be hard for you.

Reading comprehension.
The material they give you is very dry and boring. So, I concentrated on only few types of questions that it will most likely appear in the exam. Almost always you will see a question about author's main idea and something about the details in the passage. This way I will get some right and not all of them wrong. But don't just blind guess on all of the other questions.

Writing.
I, honestly, didn't have enough time to practice on writing since I spent most of the time memorizing vocabs and solving math problems. I have always been a C student in language arts and I knew that I wasn't going improve much on it; hence, the score of 3.

I, also, took courses at Kaplan. It will help you guess better.

Materials.
I bought all kinds of books for the exams but don't buy the materials from the same maker. The questions on practice exams are repeated.

Other tips.
I spent more time on first 15 questions on the actual exam whereas I didn't on the first time. If you can get first 10 to 15 right, then your score will be much higher.

Take practice exams as much as you can. I regularly took the practice exam at least twice a week.

Especially on verbal, do try to eliminate the wrong answers first.

Lastly, I had two cans of Red Bull before the exam to keep me going during the exam.

Are you retaking the exam this month or next month? I only ask because the exam is going to be different.

Best of luck.

I have not yet decided if I will be retaking it. I am leaning more towards retaking it. I took the exam at the beginning of this month and I have not yet heard what my AW score is. I will have to take the new GRE which has been a huge factor. 1. It will be a lot different. 2. It is said to be much harder 3. It's an hour longer but 4. They say there is a lot more math which would be good for me because I love math. I didn't do as good as I would have liked on the quant. portion because I had it last. I don't know. I know I would have to take some time and learn the new test and I just do not know if it would be worth it. I hope that my GPA can be enough to overpower my GRE. Thank you so much for all the advice. I read the Kaplan prep book and took practice tests but I still did not feel prepared because I didn't memorize enough Vocab.

 

[Analyst2PT]

You dont have to worry about memorizing vocabs for the new exam. They got rid of antonyms and analogies. =)

Good luck, Jessie.

 

[tj3157]

Ok. I was reading your thread and honestly I need your advice now!!!

I took the GRE and made a 360 on the verbal portion and a 620 on the quantitative. How on earth did you help your score so much?! I did the study books and the practice tests but I am not a reading comprehension and vocabulary kind of girl. I got the vocab cards and made it through the first 100 of them with about 400 left in the box. Do you think I should go through all of those vocab words memorize them to a tee and then retake it? What is your advice? How did you do it? I need help. I do not want to retake the GRE but after seeing how well you did on the retake I am inspired!!!

Thanks so much!

Jessie

DO NOT BOTHER WITH THE VOCAB BOX!!!! It's a HUGE waste of time. I memorized all 500, and I only scored 10 points higher on the verbal the second time. I think I only saw a grand total of 3 of those words on the GRE. I was so mad that I spent all that time memorizing the words in that stupid Kaplan vocab box.
The best thing you can do to improve your score is to learn to recognize the patterns and to memorize the latin roots of words. Much more helpful.

 

[DPTHopeful921]

i didnt think they were getting rid of analogies and antonyms, but were just reducing the number of those questions. So is the verbal section really only going to consist of sentence completions and reading passages?? Are they really putting more emphasis on the quantitative section?

 

[powemb3]

I downloaded a SAT/GRE vocab words audio book from itunes and just listened to it all the way through for everyday about a month before the exam. (50 minutes long) You can do this throughout the day when your not able to study, like working out, driving, work around the house, etc. It sounds really lame, but it wasn't that bad and I think it really helped. Besides listening to the audio book, I practiced as many tests as possible and ended up scoring in the top 73% on the verbal portion. The audiobook only cost a few bucks and I think it really helped! Good luck!

 

[okramango]

i didnt think they were getting rid of analogies and antonyms, but were just reducing the number of those questions. So is the verbal section really only going to consist of sentence completions and reading passages?? Are they really putting more emphasis on the quantitative section?

The new GRE will not have any straight up analogies or antonyms. Instead, there is a new section called "Sentence Equivalence," where you choose two words from a list to fill in the blank on a sentence, so that the sentence has the same meaning with each word that you choose. It is kind of like an analogy, but you have it in context with the rest of the sentence. In my opinion, this is much easier than just the straight analogies. Here is the info:
http://www.ets.org/gre/revised_general/prepare/verbal_reasoning

Another change that will make the new test easier, in my opinion, is that all of the questions will be equally scored, and you will be able to go back and review your questions.