Yet another one of those GRE questions
So, for about the past week, I've been studying at least two hours a day on my GRE workbook (Kaplan), and so far, while I've improved a little bit, I'm getting nervous about whether or not I'll be ready enough to do well on test day, which will probably be sometime in October. I do fine on things like the reading questions and sentence completion, but my analogies and antonyms bring my score way, way down. Math I also do better on some parts than others, and I am working on both sections, but since I'm applying to MFA programs in creative writing, the verbal section is obviously more important.
I've been doing my best to improve my vocabulary, since that's one of the things keeping me back. I signed up for a couple of word of the day services, and will keep looking at the vocab list provided by the workbook I got, which will help. But my main concern, is that some of the schools I plan on applying to either request the GRE, or don't require it but recommend it. So, my question to the comm is: for those of you who know a thing or two about creative writing MFA programs, how important are the GRE's, when they are required or requested? What scores should I be looking to get? I understand that next to other very strong materials, low GRE scores are not as important, and of course I would venture to say that the rest of my materials are going to be quite strong, but I don't plan on getting a low score on the GRE's based on this assumption. All I really want to know, is how much these programs look at GRE scores, and what types of scores they might be looking for.
Also, in the case of schools that don't require but encourage it, higher scores would obviously make me a more competitive candidate, but would lower scores hurt my application? I just don't want to shut myself out of any opportunities here.
And in case it helps, the schools I plan to apply to that require the GRE's are Penn State and Emerson, and the schools that don't require it but encourage it are SUNY Stony Brook, and Iowa.
I've been doing my best to improve my vocabulary, since that's one of the things keeping me back. I signed up for a couple of word of the day services, and will keep looking at the vocab list provided by the workbook I got, which will help. But my main concern, is that some of the schools I plan on applying to either request the GRE, or don't require it but recommend it. So, my question to the comm is: for those of you who know a thing or two about creative writing MFA programs, how important are the GRE's, when they are required or requested? What scores should I be looking to get? I understand that next to other very strong materials, low GRE scores are not as important, and of course I would venture to say that the rest of my materials are going to be quite strong, but I don't plan on getting a low score on the GRE's based on this assumption. All I really want to know, is how much these programs look at GRE scores, and what types of scores they might be looking for.
Also, in the case of schools that don't require but encourage it, higher scores would obviously make me a more competitive candidate, but would lower scores hurt my application? I just don't want to shut myself out of any opportunities here.
And in case it helps, the schools I plan to apply to that require the GRE's are Penn State and Emerson, and the schools that don't require it but encourage it are SUNY Stony Brook, and Iowa.