I read through a bunch of these posts and was hoping to get some of your opinions/suggestions regarding my own personal situation!
I'm a senior soon to be applying for the counseling psychology phd program at the university of iowa (for fall 2014)
Psychology major with social work and human relations double minor.
3.94/4.0 GPA (4.33/4.0 something like that GPA for psych due to several A+'s)
I've worked in a social psychology research lab for a year and a half and am a certified crisis intervention specialist at the Johnson County Crisis Center which I've worked at once a week since last fall.
I just took the GRE for the first time today and got 159 verbal and 152 quantitative :'(
I haven't gotten my AW score yet obviously.
The 'preferred' GRE score for this program is 1200, and converted to the old scoring system my scores combined is 1250...which I found very discouraging
So I looked up the stats of the current accepted students GRE scores:
median GRE verbal : 560 or 157 in the new scoring system
median GRE quant: 620 (149 new scoring)
median GRE AW: 4.5
median undergraduate GPA: 3.57
So, again, my scores are just slightly above their medians...
I'm fairly confident in my ability to write a good SOP and feel like my letters of rec. will be good also.. but I just don't feel that confident with such low GRE scores... and I also don't have time to take the psychology subject test before my deadlines.
Anyone have any advice? Are my scores super bad for this program? Would you suggest re-taking the GRE? (I'm hesitant to do so because I don't feel like I'll have an adequate amount of time to study and raise my scores significantly with my 5 classes and 3 jobs this semester)
I was thinking maybe if my AW score is low I'd have no choice but to re-take the GRE ...? Maybe with at least a 5 on AW my scores overall wouldn't look so bad?
I'm just looking for any input, suggestions or advice! I'm obviously very discouraged right now haha
Thanks!!