barner

Yea, I got an email from them Friday evening.

I applied to a handful of Master's programs and was accepted into Berkeley yesterday. The other decisions I've received are below...now I'm just hoping to hear news either way from the last two schools and trying to decide where to go from here.

So, after lurking on this board for the past few weeks I finally decided to join. Now, I'm facing a little dilemma and hoping that somebody will have some wise words for me about what to do...here goes: I'm a mechanical engineering student at a decent state school (top 100 in engineering) with a 3.98, three years of research experience (including a summer at NASA JPL), and one second author publication. I took the GRE in November and received 800Q, 570V, and 5.0AW. However, I recently received a letter from ETS stating that my verbal section wasn't scored correctly - something about an incorrect algorithm. Anyway, they won't tell me how it affected my score but have offered a free retake of just that section, with my new score replacing the old. I've contacted the schools I've applied to in order to see if this will even matter since most of their application deadlines have past, and am awaiting responses. My question is, even if they do allow it, is it worth it to retake? On one hand, I feel like I can do better than this, especially since I can just focus on the verbal section and memorize words for the next week or so. On the other hand, though, I am dreading hitting "sumbit" just to see a lower score pop up (which seems quite possible, given the sporadic nature of this section). I would imagine that the GRE Verbal section is a tiny aspect of my application, especially for engineering...but, at some of the top schools I'm applying to I would also imagine that every little bit counts. So, will the rest of my profile speak loudly enough that a mediocre verbal section is disregarded, or should I spend a portion of my Christmas break with my nose in a dictionary and take the risk? Thanks for any help!