Should you take the GRE twice?

[jilly11]

Hi all,

I am wondering if anyone has/will take the GRE twice if they don't do well the first time.

I have myself set to take the GRE Nov 10th..but if I do epically bad then I wont have time to take it again before the admission deadline.

Advice? Thoughts?

Thanks!

[Kitkat]

I'll be taking the GRE a second time this fall, on advice of prof's in my department. I think that I did rather well the first time, and but the problem with my score was a low quant score, compared to some of the schools that I am looking at. So what they said was to take it again, and raise the quant score. It was much more about percentiles in specific sections then overall score that was the issue.

[eklavya]

i say take it till you are satisfied and confident with your scores! one of my friends took it up to 3 times to increase his scores, and increased he did! he got into the top schools in his area with his scores, albeit i doubt it was only his gre scores that helped him.

[runonsentence]

I'd say to retake if you think you can definitely score better (perhaps you didn't take practice exams, didn't study enough, or didn't target your study to testing strategies). But if you're fairly satisfied with your scores, my personal opinion is that your time would be better spent on more important components of your application like the SoP.

However, that said: you say that you actually won't have time to retake the exam if you don't do well? Why do you ask?

[jilly11]

Hi Macchiato

I'm wondering if I should cancel/reschedule so that I have time to take it twice.

[Eigen]

How are you scoring on practice tests?

Are you usually a good standardized tester, or do you suffer from anxiety/other issues?

[jilly11]

**oops i meant to write to "runonsentence" not macchiato!

[jilly11]

I'm def not a good test taker and do get very anxious. Haven't done a practice yet..will get on to that soon!