(no subject)
A professor's perspective on retaking the GRE.
I'm part of a research team, and part of our meetings is discussion about grad school. This professor reviews applications and gave us her opinion on when they see that someone has retaken the GRE.
If you only take it once and get a bad score, professors could think that you're a good student but just had a really shitty day.
If you retake the test and get the same score, there is no benefit of the doubt. They see that your score was accurate the first time and that there would be little chance of improving.
If you retake the test and get a much better score then it looks good because it has shown significant improvement.
In sum:
-take it once if you know you suck at it
-take it twice if you were throwing up/crying/ or otherwise sick on your test day and you know you can do much better.
-if you're unsure, then don't risk it. focus your energies on improving other parts of your application. Such as service, research, or GPA.
I'm part of a research team, and part of our meetings is discussion about grad school. This professor reviews applications and gave us her opinion on when they see that someone has retaken the GRE.
If you only take it once and get a bad score, professors could think that you're a good student but just had a really shitty day.
If you retake the test and get the same score, there is no benefit of the doubt. They see that your score was accurate the first time and that there would be little chance of improving.
If you retake the test and get a much better score then it looks good because it has shown significant improvement.
In sum:
-take it once if you know you suck at it
-take it twice if you were throwing up/crying/ or otherwise sick on your test day and you know you can do much better.
-if you're unsure, then don't risk it. focus your energies on improving other parts of your application. Such as service, research, or GPA.