Should I retake my GRE for top-10 mech e?

[bobbyDukes]

I will be applying direct PhD in mechanical engineering.

 

Verbal: 160

Quant: 159

 

I'm concerned about my quant score. I got hung up on a couple really tough problems and it cost me a lot of time. I definitely don't think I performed to the best of my abilities.

 

My target schools are UC Berkeley, Stanford, GA Tech, Michigan, Purdue

 

My other qualifications are 3.76 GPA, I did an REU last summer at Purdue (I'm not from Purdue), and I have a paper on the way with research I did as an independent study last year. My paper will likely not be submitted before I apply to grad school though. My LOR's should be fairly strong. 

 

Any comments would be greatly appreciated.

[bsharpe269]

That's not a horrible quant score but if I were you then I would retake and shoot for 163+ Q

[Vene]

I think that's a borderline case; your verbal is great and your quantitative is respectable (if you weren't in engineering I'd say it's good). If you weren't looking at top 10 I'd say you're good as a top 100 or top 50 program shouldn't have a problem with those scores. The real risk, in my opinion, comes from if they use GRE as a way to thin the number of applicants and if you're on just the low side. Everything else about your application looks great.

 

That said, knowing people in Purdue is going to help you a lot. Let anybody you worked with know you're applying to their graduate program if they don't know already. You can also ask them what they think about your score as Purdue's professors may have more insight.