Hi All,
I recently took my GRE and got 159 in Quants and 163 in Verbal. I’m planning to apply for below programs:-
MS in MIS in top 10 colleges
MBA in top 20 colleges
MS Computer Science related(not actual Computer Science) programs in Carnegie Mellon University.
Could you please let me know if my score is suffiicent enough for top 20 colleges in Information Technology related Masters or MBA programs in US.
Please let me know if I need to retake my GRE, I’m really doubting if my score on Quants would help.
Thanks.
@grefreak if you haven’t already, look up GRE-related info on the programs you’re applying to. Oftentimes they’ll put recommended scores or 25-75%ile scores of admitted students. If your 159 is well below those thresholds, you may want to retake.
Do note that since the GRE General Test is essentially a high-school level test, a lot of top programs may not emphasize it as much. But you wouldn’t want a low quant score to reflect badly on you.
Hi MITer94 thank you for your reply. I checked the portals and looks like my score is around the average score posted for Quants.
Is there anyway to connect to an alumni from the grad schools where I’m planning to apply or to an alumni from a top grad school. I need some general guidance on preparing the SOP and LORs.
@grefreak from my experience, you generally don’t ask random alumni for guidance on these things since they often have more important things to do. Of course, some of those alumni might be lurking around CC and may wish to chime in. If you already know the alumnus, well that’s a different story…
For writing your personal statements, there are lots of guides on the internet on how to write an effective SOP. I would go there first.
Second, you do not prepare LORs. You get to know faculty well enough, and maybe they’ll write one for you.
The 163 verbal is probably fine. The 159 quant is low, especially for computer science-related programs.
The most-used test for an MBA program is the GMAT, and those are usually the average scores reported. Many MBA programs don’t post average GRE scores, but the top ones that do usually post average scores that are in the low to mid 160s for each section.
Some of the professional CS-related programs - like most of the ones at CMU I checked (software engineering, HCI, IT strategy) either don’t publish GRE averages or made them so difficult to find that I wasn’t able to easily find them on the website. However, I’m willing to bet that the quant scores are somewhere in the mid-160s, especially for the more sciency and less businessy programs.
So yes, I’d retake the GRE to see if you can push up that quant score.
Hi juillet, thank you for your reply. I tried to check on CMU website and they have listed the average gre score only for the MS in PS program which is indicated as quants 159, but could not find for other programs.
Is there a chance of getting into MS in MIS at any of the below colleges:-
- CMU
- TAMU
- Univ of Arizona
- Indiana Univ
- Univ of Maryland