<p>I'm an international applicant. I've just received my GRE scores. I was shocked to see a 3.5 (20th percentile). My my other scores were 600 Verbal and 770 Quantitative. Does anybody know how much value do biomedical programs give to the writing assessment scores? Does this mean i am totally out?</p>
<p>nope. Occasionally programs have automatic sorting and can overlook your application. But i had a friend who had this kind of score and got in everywhere. In a couple places some faculty knew she was applying and picked up her application by hand though.</p>
<p>Thanks slashpi. I actually didn't finish the last sentence in the issue topic, but still expected a much higher score. Do you think it is worth rescore/retake?</p>
<p>Hi DouDou,</p>
<p>Take it again. Writing is low but not the problem. Your verbal is. I think if you can get it to around 650 or higher and still maintain you math score above 750, your good to go, regardless of the essay scores.</p>
<p>I wouldn't worry about it. I certainly wouldn't retake it...I'm assuming you applied this cycle anyway and that isn't an option. A 600V is a great score, especially for an international applicant. I think most biomedical programs don't really look too hard at the writing score, and most probably still don't know how to take it anyway. For one, you will never in your scientific career be asked to respond to a prompt that you have no background on and write an essay in 45 minutes (or less). Besides that, the scoring sucks. Unlike the other parts of the exam, it is only out of 6, with scores every 0.5. So yes, a 3.5 is 20th % which seems way low, but only by virtue of the scoring system. Anyway, it's probably all out of your hands at this point anyway and I wouldn't worry too much.</p>
<p>Thank you New_User. I hope you are right.</p>