doctor-to-be

Yes. You can skip sections getting "no score".

Extremely hard - and not a true reflection of one's capabilities and talents in my opinion.

You could take only the essays portion and skip the other sections in order to not run the risk of scoring lower. Your credentials and work experience are excellent. I believe your Q and V scores are fine.

Hi everyone. I haven't posted in a while because I hit the GRE preparation and succeeded - I didn't give up and it paid off. It took me 4 tries (keep in mind I've been out of school for approximately 20 years). The only things left are: waiting for Master's transcript to arrive and waiting for GRE score to be reported. School still has openings for class starting in fall/2016, thus they're accepting applications now. I need help and support on 2 worries: 1)I scored well on quant and verbal of the second to last GRE, but didn't do well on the essay that day. So in the last GRE that I took, I only took the essays section, which resulted in an excellent score. In the application, there's only 1 space for the date of the GRE. So I e-mailed the admissions department informing them about this situation so that they understand the timing of everything. Thoughts? 2)Expecting to submit everything by this coming Wed., am I too late? What are the chances of openings (or just 1 for me ) still existing? Would they really reject a candidate solely due to there being no more opening? If I submit my application and there's no more room, how would that get handled?

Thank you. The staff didn't explain any of these rules during the security check. And, they didn't offer to provide me with any ear plugs. I will create an addendum to my complaint. This helps.

Wow. very inspiring.

oh my god - those scores!! 1000s, perhaps 10s of 1000s would do anything for these #s.

Your Quantitative score is great. The verbal and essays perhaps could be a bit better in my opinion. 2 weeks is a very brief time to prepare. If you don't have much work experience outside of academics, then I would retake.

Since the test, I've been too upset to think of that. Not being allowed to put one foot on the chair should be documented in their listing of rules, along with no ripping of scratch paper.

Today - I walked into the center feeling good, confident, and prepared. As I was working on my General test, I noticed that the person behind me was making the following noise out of her mouth every several minutes: mmm. This was not done softly, as the tone of this was easily audible to many. THEN, to make matters worse, another person was SPEAKING in a normal tone of voice for what seemed like 1-2 minutes!!! Anxious as it was, I was feeling so distracted!!! I used the set of ear coverings a bit, but these were too uncomfortably heavy and painful to me ears. In the 10 minutes break, I complained about these 2 disruptive noise makers. This staff member minimized the seriousness of this by saying (paraphrasing here) "some people need to read out loud to help them focus." WHAT???!!!! His best response was saying that he'll report them. He didn't kick them out! Later on, I had the bottom of one of my feet on the chair (without shoes) for comfort - staff came over to me and told me to put my foot down NOT on break. REALLY? Is that how people cheat these days?

too TIME consuming that is - another silly mistake.

Thank you Rich! Your support means a lot. Taking general GRE again this Saturday. What's helped to improve my practice set scores in Kaplan, along with a better score on my last MST has been learning to QUICKLY decide if the problem before me is "easy" (quoted because none of this is easy) enough to get correct AND not too time consuming. If this problem falls into this category - do it. Secondly doing the problems that I believe I can get correct that are too consuming. The rest - that's what goofy math, repeated numbers, etc. are for.

If I score at least 300 next week I will apply this year, considering that their requirement is APPROXIMATELY 305. If rejected on first try, I'll raise my score and reapply just 1 more time next year (looking at just 1 school). Are other applicants over 40 years old struggling with GREs just as much as me - having left school approximately a couple of decades ago?

I'm content with resolving this dilemma - If I score at least 300 next week I will apply this year, considering that their requirement is APPROXIMATELY 305. If rejected, I'll raise my score and reapply just 1 more time next year.

Doctor-to-be here. Hi Rich. I've been listening to/watching a ton of your videos (if this is the Rich I'm thinking of) on Empower lately. These are very good, but I was so discouraged AGAIN when I scored a combined 294 on a MST this past weekend. Real scores: 149 quant. 148 verbal a couple weeks ago. Prior to this MSTs ranged from 288 to 302. I've honestly been working as hard as possible in this training. I graduated with my Master's in 1997, undergraduate in 1995. GRE work has been a living hell.

Thank you. I'm feeling more confident with some tricks that I'm learning from Empower program in not giving up on the GREs. The worst that could happen is I apply next year. I'm glad, phillyhed, that I'm not the only one who's applying to just 1 school. I love where I reside and will not move. This is the only program that's near me. Besides, just applying is a lot of work.

I graduated with my Master's in clinical social work in late 1990s, and am working on an application for a doctorate program. My GPAs were great (eg, 3.8 out of 4 in Master's). I have an outstanding current and historical employment track in clinical psychiatry. My essay & change of career statement will be excellent. My references are great. I've heard that doctorate psychology (Psy.D) admissions are extremely competitive. Because of my age (a lot older than most people here I bet ), I will apply only once and to just 1 school. Their cut off/qualifying score for math and verbal general GREs is combined 305. If I get a 305-310, would that be good enough to apply? Or, would it be better to give myself more time to prepare for the GREs in order to get a 315-320? I shooting low because despite preparing A LOT for a little over a month, I've been struggling much more than expected, and got only a 297 on the first real GRE. Second GRE is scheduled for next month.

I graduated with my master's (in clinical social work) in late 1990s, and am trying to get into a doctorate program. My GPAs were great. I have an incredibly outstanding current and historical employment track in psychiatry. I've heard that doctorate psychology (Psy.D) admissions are extremely competitive. Because of my age I plan on applying only once and to just 1 school. Their cut off qualifying score for math and verbal general GREs is combined 305. If I get a 305-310 (second test is scheduled for the beginning of Dec.), would that be good enough to apply? Or, would it be better to give myself more time to prepare for the GREs in order to get a 315-320? I shooting low because despite preparing A LOT for a little over a month, I've been struggling a lot more than expected, and got only a 297 on the first real GRE.

I'm increasingly realizing that much success is dependent on mental state outside of actual knowledge of math and verbal. For instance, I was at a point in my preparation whereby my math scores were getting worse, despite lots of studying. This could only be due to anxiety.

I would not submit it. I personally believe that schools should either request something or not. Recommending this and that seems useless to me.

Thank you!! I didn't score well enough, so preparing to retake.

First general GRE is this coming Sat. I've been using Magoosh, Kaplan, and Manhattan. Despite having taken 6 practice tests over the last several weeks, I continue to occasionally get questions wrong which, after the fact, seem very easy to me whereby I think to myself "wow! If I had double checked this and gone slower I would've gotten it correct!!!" What's really creepy about such mistakes is that they can be the difference between meeting my goal or not. Because I have an anxiety problem, I've been taking a little klonopin before each of these, and have to do this of course for real thing. I've been taking a lot of slow deep breaths, etc. Any advice about anything else I can try to stop making such mistakes? The amount of time allowed (especially for math) is REALLY stringent!!!

I TOTALLY relate to this. I believe the "frozen" sense is from anxiety. Test for me in Sat.

if you're in the extreme beginning of this program, get out. if you're way too deep into it, stick it out.

It's been many years since graduating with my Master's. I have a ton of work experience and am applying to a doctorate program. This asks for 3 recommendations. There's no way for me to see these (providers electronically send these to the school). The application allows for more than 3 recommendations. 1)Would it hurt me to have 5 recommendations (2 more)? 2)My supervisor and I have worked together for 7 years. Most of this time has involved us getting along, but we earlier this year had a major conflict where he wrote me up (first level warning) for something which I believe was extremely minor. I don't believe that I deserved to get that warning. Since that "blew over" things have definitely been better between us, but I've been really worried about if I should use him, as I have to trust these recommendation providers. In our talk about this today, I started off by saying that I've hesitated to ask him for a recommendation because of our recent conflict. Then: Boss (B)-everyone has conflicts. it happens. the conflicts we've had never changed my feelings toward you. I would be happy to do this for you. Just tell me what the school requires. I believe that you have a brilliant academic mind. He then mentioned a couple of other strengths of mine. SO should I trust him or would it hurt me without using a supervisor for this?