GRE... need help please...

[pttlm]

Hi everybody,

I know, I know... we have similar posts... but I was so shocked today that I decided to ask for some (at least) moral help.

I'm planning to apply to some top tier unis (PhD in Political Science), but then the GRE scores came. This is my whole situation:

GPA: 3.9 (from a Spanish university)

TOEFL: 105

GRE: 620 (verbal), 700 (quant), 3.5 (aw)

Do I need to retake the GRE because of the AW section?

I will appreciate very much your answers... thank you for that.

[SecurityStudiesguy]

Where are you applying?

[Penelope Higgins]

If you are not a native English speaker, you definitely do not need to retake the exam because of the AW score - you are submitting a TOEFL score, which will substitute. Even if you are a native English speaker, we pay far more attention to your actual writing than the score on some standardized test. To be blunt, the grad admissions spreadsheet in my department does not even have a column for the AW score. We completely ignore it.

[pttlm]

SecurityStudiesguy: I was planning to apply to some top tier ones (berkeley, princeton, chicago, yale) and some second tier ones as well... do you think my GRE AW score will spoil the applications to the top ones?

Penelope Higgins: Thank you so much for your advise! I really appreciate it.

[icedance]

Hey pttlm, I am also a non-native speaker and have the same problem for low AW score, even worse than you. I have asked for help 1 month ago. You may find the old posts. One from Zahar Berkut might also be helpful for you.

I have heard very often that many political science admissions committees ignore the GRE writing score because they can see your writing themselves in your writing sample. While I have also heard that low AW grades "look bad," and that the "average" student at a top 10 department has a 5.5, they also insist that all candidates are evaluated on an individual basis.

Just make sure you put in a lot of effort drafting the personal statement and really proving to the admissions committee why your background and your interests match the department well. If you are planning to do more quantitative or formal theory work, the writing score probably matters even less.

Be sure to clean up the tiny little grammatical errors that you might have.

Good Luck

[gradcafe26]

I've never heard people saying that GRE-AW matters, i got 3.5 as well, lol

[pttlm]

Thank you so much!!!