GRE Woes - High Verbal, Low Quant, Abysmal AW
I was planning on applying to a variety of master’s programs this fall - in applied anthropology, education policy, public policy, etc. After viewing my AW score this morning for the first time (3.5), I’m starting to feel like my application as a whole won’t be competitive enough for certain types of programs. But ultimately I just don’t know. Perhaps my ignorance of my chances is a clue that I should wait another year and do all that I can in the meantime to improve.
My GRE scores were: 730 Verbal, 640 Quant, and 3.5 AW. I’m pleased with the verbal score and not really surprised by the quant, but the low writing score has me feeling pretty insecure/disheartened right now. Though I’ve never stood out for my writing ability, I thought I was at least competent. I realize that a low AW score by itself is not so dire… unless it doesn’t meet a cutoff for admissions. It seems that a 3.5 is at or below the minimum acceptable score for many programs. And while I could take the new GRE, I worry that I’d waste time preparing for it that would be better spent strengthening other parts of my application.
So I have a few questions about my score:
- Is my AW score so low that I absolutely should take the exam again?
- Is the AW score considered heavily in decisions about funding?
- Some MPP programs are especially math-heavy… should I even bother applying to them given my low quant score and the fact that I haven’t taken any courses in economics and only one very basic statistics course? My undergrad was in anthropology and I have absolutely no experience with quantitative methods… am I answering my own question? :\