<p>I took the GRE yesterday. Have a couple quick questions for people who have already been through grad school app process.</p>
<p>1) Is the score they give you at the end of the exam your final score or can something change?</p>
<p>2) How much does the Writing score matter for eng. grad school? I haven't seen the stats on that listed anywhere. I ravaged the argument essay, but I think my issues one was somewhat shaky, since I didn't have time to check over it.</p>
<p>3) Is there any reason for an engineer to retake the exam if he got a 690 on Verbal? I got an 800 on the quant(supposedly - see Q1) and I'm not sure if they let you take the best from each test like they did with SAT.</p>
<p>4) Anyone here taken the GRE before the last change? I know they say scores last 5 years, but they're going to change the format next year. If I decide not to go straight to grad school, will they still accept my score on the old-format exam a couple years down the road?</p>
<p>I was going to check with my research adviser, but he's out for the 3 day weekend.</p>
<p>No need to retake the GRE. I think many grad schools take only a passing glance at it. If there's a really low score they might reject you but that's about it. I have never gotten the impression that anyone gets into engineering grad school simply because they got a good GRE score. This isn't like the ACT or SAT as those are critical scores.</p>
<p>What Dr. Reynolds said is pretty much what I've been hearing too (I'm taking the GRE in a few weeks). GPA seems to be much more important than GRE scores.</p>
<p>I've also gotten the impression that the GRE is used just to trim the number of apps coming in; past a certain threshold, it's not even considered.</p>
<p>I nearly died when I saw my 650 for verbal, since I'd gotten an 800 on the writing part and scored higher verbal than I did on the math for the SAT, but it turns out that anything above a 600's pretty good for an engineer. My 800 math score was the only one that anyone really cared about at all, and even so, they didn't care that much. So, no worries.</p>
<p>Primarily because three years ago was the first year they started using the writing test, it's scored by a computer algorithm and not by real people, and engineering admissions committees everywhere are vastly annoyed that the testmakers removed the analytical ability logic/reasoning multiple choice exam, which was something that they could actually use...</p>
<p>I kind of get the impression that the engineering grad programs are so fed up with the new and completely useless GRE writing exam that even if you flunk it, they'd ignore that score as a matter of principle.</p>
<p>I got the flu halfway through the first time I'd taken it, but I'd already done the writing part by the time I got to feeling lousy, and I felt fairly confident about it. I had a well-written essay with immaculate punctuation and grammar and positively sumptuous vocabulary... I went to a freakin' FINISHING school, for the love of pete, if I can do <em>anything</em>, I can write a solid essay.</p>
<p>I got a 4.5.</p>
<p>So, I read all the books. I took notes on all the things that a person could do to increase their grade in analytical writing. I read how everyone was able to "hack" the algorithm, what the different things were that the algorithm picked up on, what elements you needed to include, the things that were apparently telltale marks of classic "bad" writing... I tailored my essay such that it would be deemed flawless. I figured I'd gotten a slam-dunk and left the testing facility feeling fantastic.</p>