What is a good Physics GRE score?
Posted: Fri Aug 08, 2008 9:51 am
Well. I'm a little unfamiliar with the paradigm of standardized tests and a couple of days ago I spotted this forum so here I am. First off an introduction... I'm an insomniac programmer at UofM (Ann Arbor). On a more relevant note, this fall I'll be a senior physics major. Unsurprisingly, it's time for grad school applications and the physics GRE... which brings me to my next point... what do all those GRE scores mean???
Yesterday I took my first practice test from a booklet labeled GR9277 and after converting the raw score I get 840. Now this has me a baffled since, from my understanding the GRE is scored out of 800. Unfortunately the booklet seems to be missing a few pages which probably explain what 840 means. Is this score good or bad for where I'm applying to (which I'll post in a moment)?
Where I'm applying to:
University of Colorado (Boulder)
Harvard
MIT
University of Maryland (College Park)
maybe University of Rochester
Now I'm aware that the physics GRE scores will be less of a problem if you have other stuff to bolster your application. In this area, I have about 3 years worth of research experience in a cold atoms lab and one paper in Phys. Rev. Letters (where I'm second author). I'm currently writing another one hopefully for Review of Scientific Instruments. Is this a good support for my application or am I applying to places out of my league? Oh yes... and my GPA is 3.7something (4.0 in computer science, physics and math courses.... crap in everything else) and I'm not sure about how much the GPA matters either...
In summary, my questions are:
1) What the hell does 840 mean???
2) Am I being to ambitious in where I apply?
3) Does GPA matter?
I'm clueless about grad school applications so I'm hoping someone here can help me out. Sorry for the verbosity of this post and if there are answers to my questions posted elsewhere feel free to just post a link.
Thanks,
A. Bucket.
Yesterday I took my first practice test from a booklet labeled GR9277 and after converting the raw score I get 840. Now this has me a baffled since, from my understanding the GRE is scored out of 800. Unfortunately the booklet seems to be missing a few pages which probably explain what 840 means. Is this score good or bad for where I'm applying to (which I'll post in a moment)?
Where I'm applying to:
University of Colorado (Boulder)
Harvard
MIT
University of Maryland (College Park)
maybe University of Rochester
Now I'm aware that the physics GRE scores will be less of a problem if you have other stuff to bolster your application. In this area, I have about 3 years worth of research experience in a cold atoms lab and one paper in Phys. Rev. Letters (where I'm second author). I'm currently writing another one hopefully for Review of Scientific Instruments. Is this a good support for my application or am I applying to places out of my league? Oh yes... and my GPA is 3.7something (4.0 in computer science, physics and math courses.... crap in everything else) and I'm not sure about how much the GPA matters either...
In summary, my questions are:
1) What the hell does 840 mean???
2) Am I being to ambitious in where I apply?
3) Does GPA matter?
I'm clueless about grad school applications so I'm hoping someone here can help me out. Sorry for the verbosity of this post and if there are answers to my questions posted elsewhere feel free to just post a link.
Thanks,
A. Bucket.