<p>I am graduating in May with a BA in art and art history from SUNY Albany. I planned on applying to the Information Science graduate school at the same school. I've taken the GREs twice now and both times my scores have been not so hot. Now my mother says I should look into other options. So I was wondering if ya all out there who have been through the process could give me some in site on how important the scores are. Thanks so much.</p>
<p>As a general rule, GREs will keep you out of schools but won't get you in. High scores, do however, help quite a bit in assistantships since there aren't many things to use to compare students across disciplines in a (somewhat) unbiased manner</p>
<p>apumic is giving you some good advice, I think. The value of a GRE depends on the school and the program. I mean, realistically, if two candidates have similar r</p>
<p>in my experience, I think GREs don't really matter.. I got a 790/560/5.0, and I'm interviewing at UW, UCSF, MIT, Caltech, and Stanford. Although, I may be an exception, because my research/recommendations probably mattered a LOT more, considering I am coming from a lab where the P.I. is on the NAS and I have papers in Nature and JBC as third and first author, respectively.</p>
<p>09, your GRE is also fairly strong (granted your verbal is pretty weak but if you're going for the sciences, they'd care more about your quant skills as long as you have documented evidence you can write well). GRE matters more on the lower end of the scale (i.e., an 1100 may make a dept really question your intellectual abilities and preparedness for grad school at the doctoral level despite other criteria and below a 1000 will often get your app rejected at the grad school secretary's front desk)</p>
<p>Obviously if you have a nature paper and your PI is famous (NAS, HHMI, etc) you are going to get in at a lot of places.</p>
<p>However, for the rest of us, which is the overwhelming majority, GREs are important.
Just look at the averages- most top programs that publish their numbers have about 1400 or above.
The subject GRE probably helps a lot if you do exceptionally (95th or better).</p>
<p>But 09, that's a really awesome credential you have built for yourself already.</p>