<p>The title is what my PI said when I mentioned that I got a 800/500 on the gre. -_-</p>
<p>A bit of background: I just finished my third year towards my BS in computer science with a minor in Math and Stat. My plan for this summer was to take the GRE a week or two after finals and then again in the fall if necessary. All of my test prep books swore that the new exam's release would be pushed back, but it it wasn't. I managed to get the last available seat within 100 miles of here for the current exam, which is on June 29th. </p>
<p>I'm aiming to go for a phd in applied mathematics or something similar, (my current research interests are fairly narrowed down, but there's a lot of cross disciplinary interest. I've read papers in everything from theoretical physics to social journals about it.) and a lot of the sites that I've checked out say something like "we only care about your verbal score if it's really low."</p>
<p>My PI is in the Bio department, new, and European, so I don't think he's the most reliable gre consultant, but his comment did freak me out a bit. Any advice on if I should retake it? Also (and I know this is dependent on the school) would it hurt me if I, say, got a 750/550 when I retook it? What about a 750/450? Considering I just took it a little over a month ago, and have put more time into my research than studying, should I really expect any kind of improvement aside from random fluctuations?</p>
<p>At the risk of making this poorly written post longer, here's some of my stats to put the gre scores in perspective. </p>
<p>GRE: 800Q, 500V, 4.0W</p>
<p>GPA: 3.65 - Would be higher but I got a 3.1 my first year, my two most recent semesters got a 3.8 and a 3.9.</p>
<p>School Work: 20 credits in each of my last two semesters (which is a lot), two dropped courses Chem II (I was undecided when I started, decided on something that didn't need Chem II, and replaced it with something else.) and AI (Something about my science mindset didn't like all of the teacher's bad philosophy without any experimental support, and at one point something that was blatantly contradicted.)</p>
<p>Publications: Should be at least four, depending on how everything goes. At least three with me as first author.</p>