<p>Hi everyone,
Im an international student who wanna go do grad school in the US.</p>
<p>there's this issue about the GRE. I took it last year without preparing much, and since im not a native speaker, i scored really really really bad on Verbal, and not high on Quant. i took the test again and it came out bad too. I'm planning to take it again soon, and apply (last time was around Dec).</p>
<p>i'll try hard this time, and i think i can score a good one coz I'll be seriously preparing for it, so here comes the question,
'Will the old bad GRE scores hurt the new application, if I can improve and score much better this time?'
I know that the old score will be shown too.
(i already a TOEFL, it's a bit above 100 (which is 610+ in old vers.))</p>
<p>forgot to mention that I'd like to do engineering master. </p>
<p>I think that it would be a professional act of politeness for a University to focus on the new and improved GRE score of a non native speaker of English. Your TOEFL scores seems fair to me. The only thing I can think of is that your maths portion of the GRE should be higher, because of how you said that you are to be going into Engineering.</p>
<p>Thanks guys. i should be concentrating on my quant if I wanna get into good engineering school then.</p>
<p>By the way, do they have any cut-off verbal score? coz I see that many universities have this 'no applicants in the past few years with less than 400 in verbal got accepted' even in eng.
and 400 is not easy for non-native like me. i don't see how verbal has anything to do with studying engineering plus i think my english is not that bad like what my GRE verbal score shows too. (i got less than 300!)</p>
<p>Everyone knows engineers can't write. I have a dear friend who makes a living from this fact, by ghostwriting publications "by" engineers.</p>
<p>(Now all the engineers are going to slam me, I am sure.)</p>
<p>Anyway, 400 is certainly used as a cut-off verbal score at more than one institution. Even an ESL speaker should be able to achieve 400. Really.</p>
<p>I have a question/concern that is somewhat related to the thread topic (sorry to impose, OP), and I'd appreciate your input.</p>
<p>I got a terrible score (i.e. <4) on the GRE Writing section (basically, I choked), but I nevertheless got into a top bio grad program. Is there reason to retake the test (or just the Writing section, if possible)? Could the score affect my chances of obtaining extramural fellowships/awards, or are GRE scores, if they are a factor at all, not overly important in this respect?</p>
<p>I don't know. In my field GREs are mostly for graduate admissions, but there are some national fellowships (Woodrow Wilson fellowships, and the like) that require (and definitely weight) GRE scores. If there are similar ones in bio, I would <em>imagine</em> that GREs would also be quite important. But I think a science person would be better able to answer your question.</p>