<p>I just recently took the GRE and was not sure whether to retake it or not.</p>
<p>I'm a Bioeng Major at UCSD (4th in US for undergrad). I got a 560 V, 800 Q, and have not received my writing (but I'm guessing a 5).</p>
<p>I'm applying for bioengineering and systems biology programs for fall 2008 at Stanford, Harvard, UCSD, University of Washington, and Johns Hopkins.</p>
<p>I have a 3.8 GPA with a 3.9 Major GPA, have a poster presentation at the International Conference of Systems Biology and will have a paper submitted (co-author in Molecular Systems Biology (an offshoot of Nature)) in Systems Biology before I apply.</p>
<p>The above programs have GPA avgs, of about 3.7-3.84 and have GREs that are about 590-610 V, 760-780 Q, and 4.5-5 W.</p>
<p>I know for engineering and esp. grad school, verbal scores don't make a huge impact on admissions but I was wondering if you guys think that my 560 V is too low and will hurt my chances. Should I retake it?</p>
<p>More than adaquate. It will come down to your recs and letter of recommendations supporting your research potential. Your research experience looks solid. I go to JHU and am BME. Sounds like you'd get in based on grad students I know.</p>
<p>I was talking with an undergrad advisor about grad school admissions and what really matters. The usual suspects of LOR, SOP, research experience, and transcripts came up, but what interested me the most about his comments were how the GREs were viewed. He told me that anyone in academics will tell you not to worry about GREs, particularly the verbal section when it comes to engineering. This is the common conception to a lot of people, and it makes sense. But when you take the human nature of having to "rank" grad applications into account then the numbers game is quite crucial. Busy profs probably won't take the time to read through every bit of your application so its typical to find that the raw numbers (rank in class from LOR, GPA, GREs) pull more weight than departments want to admit. He claims, I can't necesarily verify this, that students who score 700+ on the verbal sections for engineering programs tend to be theones getting into all of the top schools. There is probably some correlation to high scores on GREs and great potential from other parts of the app, but the numbers game is always a factor.</p>
<p>Just something to think about, I honestly don't know if I'd recommend you taking them again. One other thing to look at, are the averages reported for GRE verbal only for students whos first language was english or does that incorporate esl students as well, that may help you a bit.</p>
<p>My first language is not English but my undergraduate school is UCSD, so I don't have to take the TOEFL. I was in a ESL program when I was younger (pre-college), but not recently.</p>
<p>viennariver, 700+ on verbal is 97th or higher percentile. If someone can do <em>that</em> well on an area most engineers are weaker at than math, than I'm sure the rest of their application will be very strong as well. It may very well be correlated, but I doubt its causal.</p>
<p>While GRE may not accurately assess one's capacity to perform successfully in graduate school, it does test one's aptitude, at least to a certain extent. I am especially reminded of the critical reading section in GRE verbal when I am pressed to read 600+ pages of scholarly books and articles per week in classes I take now: limited time, the demand for complete understanding, and my original criticism.</p>
<p>GRE is by no means an absolute test by which one's likelihood of success in graduate school can be determined. But it does at least say something about one's preparedness, one's intellectual level. The admission committees know that. There may not be a direct causal relationship between the GRE scores and admission to top programs, but what is true is that the admits to top schools exhibit admirable GRE scores. In other words, GRE scores cannot guarantee you a spot in top schools but, while there is an extent to which you can improve your score, the scores one obtains are somewhat indicative of what level of school one is going to end up at.</p>
<p>The trendy thing today is to advise that GRE scores don't matter, but the reality behooves us to recognize that, while they may not figure into the decision as much, they do matter for they provide valuable information to the admission committees as well as the applicant him/herself.</p>
<p>That said, I think your GRE scores are perfectly reasonable for bioengineering programs. But taking it one more time just to see cannot hurt at all.</p>
<p>I'd advise you save yourself some time and money and do NOT retake. You have a perfect math score, a near-perfect writing score, and a 76th percentile for writing. Focus on your personal statement instead, as that will carry much more weight.</p>
<p>I would like to believe that personal statements carry much more weight but again I'm not sure.</p>
<p>As an example, when I was offered an RAship over the phone, the faculty I was speaking with knew my GREs scored and where they put me in regards to "rank" in the class but had to ask what I wanted to do with a PhD, which was clearly stated twice in my SOP.</p>
<p>I know what every department will tell you (SOP, recs, etc.) but I'm really questioning the actual process these days</p>
<p>viennariver - you've just hit on the one BIG thing that a high GRE will do for you: score competitive financial aid. Obviously, based on your conversation, your score was important to getting the RAship. </p>
<p>It is very likely that the person calling you was not on the adcom and so wouldn't have seen your package. In many places financial aid (including TA/RA, fellowships, etc.) is handled completely apart from admission. </p>
<p>At several schools I'm applying to this fall, the support package can be handled by a combination of as many as 3 different units: university wide (fancy fellowships), school (slightly less fancy fellowships and some TA) and department (some fellowships, TA/RA, summer funds). And of course they always encourage you to apply for external fellowships. </p>
<p>Anything above the department level will depend on GRE scores and to a lesser extent undergrad GPA to "level the playing field" across disciplines. Then somebody in the FA office puts everything together and sends the package back to the program to offer to the applicant. </p>
<p>For those whose offers are yet to come, you can find out most of this information from each university's graduate school handbook and the financial aid office. (Phone calls are often more helpful than emails BTW.)</p>
<p>The person calling me was actually responsible for grad school admissions at the school that I'm referering to. He literally evaluated my application on the phone, and as I later found out was responsible for assigning fellowships to students within that subfield.</p>
<p>The school has several adcoms dealing with graduate admissions so he wasn't the only one. What it came down to was the professors that you would potentially work with based on research interests will eventually get your application. From that basis they decide to give or not to give assistantships. So like I said, he only dealt with students in his particular subfield</p>
<p>Regardless, I've always just found all of this to be interesting. I really wonder how much what admissions committee say is important differentiate between what is actually important.</p>