Many students are caught off guard by their GRE scores once Test Day finally arrives.
Test Day has come and gone—and you fell short of the GRE score you were hoping for. Don’t despair. You still have options.
Research graduate schools’ average GRE scores
Your graduate school options may now be different from what you were expecting, so your first step should be to call the schools whose programs interest you and ask their opinions of your scores.
Do your research on the graduate school websites first, be prepared and polite on the phone, and you’ll find that admissions officers are a friendly and helpful group of people. Some may tell you that you’ll need higher scores for them to consider your application at all. Many will ask about your GPA and other qualifications before giving an opinion on your scores. Others may even say that the scores are just fine, and that higher ones won’t make a perceptible difference in your chances for acceptance.
Don’t give up on your dream schools
Even for graduate schools that expect higher GRE scores than the ones you achieved, there may still be options for you. Ask if the program will consider letting you start as a non-matriculating student. This process usually entails taking one or two of the first-semester courses in a program right along with the other graduate students. If you get a certain grade or higher (generally a B, depending on the discipline and program), the schools will agree ahead of time to accept you into the program as a fully matriculated student—with full credit for the courses you took.
This can be a great option because it gives you a chance to see if you like the particular program and also gives you confidence that you will be able to handle the work. With the added motivation of having to achieve particular grades, many of our former Kaplan students in this situation have found they got much better grades than their fellow traditional students.
Plan for retaking the test
If you do decide you need higher GRE scores after all, you should make an assessment of how realistic your score goals are. Why did you fall short of your goals the first time around? Were your actual scores close to those you were getting on your practice tests? How much did you prep before Test Day? Are you willing to do some serious self-analytical work to improve your GRE score? As the saying goes, you can’t do the same thing and expect different results.
You’ll also need to know what to do with those results when round two comes along. In 2012, the ETS (makers of the GRE) introduced a feature called ScoreSelect. This allows you to decide which scores to send to your schools—so if you’ve taken the test more than once, you can choose to send only your highest and best scores. After the exam on your second Test Day, you’ll be asked to choose one of the following options:
Do not send any scores at this time.
Send only your most recent GRE scores from your current test administration.
Send all your GRE scores from your current and past General Test administrations within the last five years.
Then, after Test Day, you can send additional score reports for a fee—with the option of sending only your most recent GRE score, sending all your scores from the last five years, or choosing to send one or more score from test administrations within the last five years. Be strategic in your decisions, prep accordingly, and plan ahead for the worst case scenario.
Reassess your Test Day prep
Many people come to Kaplan after first taking the GRE without much preparation, or with some haphazard preparation on their own. Big score increases are common for people in this situation, since gaining familiarity with the test, learning targeted strategies for the question types, brushing up on certain rusty skill areas, and practicing consistently with realistic materials can make a huge difference. But be honest with yourself in setting attainable goals and putting in the effort required to achieve them.
The progress you make initially depends on why you’re starting from where you are, and then on how much work you’re willing to do to learn how to approach the test questions differently than you did the first round of GRE prep.
Are you hitting your target GRE score? Take a free practice test to find out today.
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