Physics GRE Discussion Forums

if you take it the first time, and say, do well on the Q but not on the verbal, i know you can retake the GRE. but if you retake it, do you have to retake the Q AND the verbal? or just the verbal?

also, if you dont do well your first time, will you be judged for it? how harshly?

larry burns wrote:if you take it the first time, and say, do well on the Q but not on the verbal, i know you can retake the GRE. but if you retake it, do you have to retake the Q AND the verbal? or just the verbal?

also, if you dont do well your first time, will you be judged for it? how harshly?

How did you do? Check out the profile threads, 'bad' on verbal is relative.

If you retake it you have to take both tests.

larry burns wrote:if you take it the first time, and say, do well on the Q but not on the verbal, i know you can retake the GRE. but if you retake it, do you have to retake the Q AND the verbal? or just the verbal?

also, if you dont do well your first time, will you be judged for it? how harshly?

No, you can't pick and choose which tests you take or which scores you submit. Schools will generally look at your latest scores. They are human beings too and understand that things can happen, if you improve your score significantly I doubt they'll care that you had to take it twice. But as mentioned, the verbal section is not that important and I wouldn't recommend retaking it unless you really bombed it bad.

i'm a US citizen and on the practice GRE's, i'm scoring in the high 400- low 500 range for the verbal. i'm very worried i may not make the minimum GRE verbal score cut-off that most grad schools, especially ones like berkeley and stanford, have to admit students

Are there verbal cut-offs? I am an international student and I'll apply next fall.
Consider a situation that you have gre Q >770, gre physics >800 and toefl iBT >100.
Is there any posibility a university not to look at your application because you scored 400-500 on the verbal? I don't believe that.
The scores are not mine, just a case study.

I'm an American student, and got a 500 on the verbal section. I was admitted to some top programs, so apparently 500 is above the cutoff.

mahar wrote:Are there verbal cut-offs? I am an international student and I'll apply next fall.
Consider a situation that you have gre Q >770, gre physics >800 and toefl iBT >100.
Is there any posibility a university not to look at your application because you scored 400-500 on the verbal? I don't believe that.
The scores are not mine, just a case study.

If there was a cutoff for American applicants (and I'm not saying there is), it wouldn't apply to international applicants from non-english speaking (as a first language) countries.

oh, ok then

WakkaDojo wrote:I'm an American student, and got a 500 on the verbal section. I was admitted to some top programs, so apparently 500 is above the cutoff.

maybe you just got lucky? what was your essay score?

mahar wrote:oh, ok then

of course, there is probably a second, lower cutoff for non-english as a first language internationals.

grae313 wrote:Schools will generally look at your latest scores. They are human beings too and understand that things can happen, if you improve your score significantly I doubt they'll care that you had to take it twice. But as mentioned, the verbal section is not that important and I wouldn't recommend retaking it unless you really bombed it bad.

so if i score in the mid-high 400s, i dont have to retake it?

depends on where you want to get in.

stanford and berkeley are my top 2 choices

larry burns wrote:stanford and berkeley are my top 2 choices

400's may be a tad low. Aim for at least high 500's and make sure that these low verbal scores are offset somehow. A very literate (few spelling error and readable) statement of purpose would probably work.

General GRE Verbal is strange... I'm not a native english speaker and I've got better than 69% of the test-takers... Remembering words is the key!

nathan12343 wrote:

larry burns wrote:stanford and berkeley are my top 2 choices

400's may be a tad low. Aim for at least high 500's and make sure that these low verbal scores are offset somehow. A very literate (few spelling error and readable) statement of purpose would probably work.

did any of you take the princeton review or GRE powerprep practice tests? i got a 430 for verbal on the princeton review one, but from taking two GRE powerprep practice tests, i got 540 and 510 on those. which one is the more accurate predictor of my actual verbal score?

i'm sure i can write a literate statement of purpose as i dont usually make grammatical errors. i just have a poor reading comprehension and dont know that many vocab words

GRE powerprep is definitely more like the actual test; it uses the same software and I believe the questions are old GRE questions.

Try doing flashcards. There is a huge PDF made by some university in china to help study vocab for the verbal section of the GRE. It has literally thousands of vocab words. My advice, look through it or something similar, and make flashcards. You'll be surprised by how well this will work.

i only took the general GRE today, and got a 710 on quantitative and 490 on verbal. the 710 is really low, so i have to retake it, right?

also, i've been recently thinking of purusing astrophysics, not CFD for grad school. the fall applications are coming up, but i'm still uncertain. if i take the GRE physics, do i have to take the general at the same time? in that case, i guess it didnt matter so much that i bombed the general today