Sending out official GRE scores after a deadline..?

[Pinkman]

As title says. Although, I can take the test earlier, I want to afford myself the maximum amount of time to really nail this down. I feel its a massive part of my application and needs to be given its proper weight.

Therefore, in your experiences, would taking the exam say late December and finish applications with scores for early January be OK? Considering it takes about 10 days for officials scores to come through, I would imagine my official scores would get to schools about a week after the deadline.

Although, I will check with individual schools, I was wondering whether anyone else has ever done that?

[Pinkman]

Bump

[TakeruK]

I don't think that would be a good idea. Sending in scores late is a "privilege" you can ask for if circumstances warrant it, not something you should take advantage of! I suppose you could lie to the departments and make up some excuse why you cannot take the GRE earlier (but in many places they are offered practically every day) but that might not be in your best interests. It also took my scores much longer than 10 days to submit -- it was something like ~3-4 weeks (but I was in Canada so maybe that's the difference). In addition, I would only count business days as part of the "10 days", so with all the holidays in December, I wouldn't cut it too close.

I submitted my Physics GRE score late to a few schools because the subject GREs are only offered in April, Oct, and Nov. I was not able to take the test in April nor October since I was out of town at a conference. The subject GRE scores take longer than general GRE scores (about 4-6 weeks) to become available so my official PGRE score was not ready until ~Dec 20 so it's a little bit late for a few schools. But since ETS intends its November exam date to be used for applications submitted that December/January, it makes sense for departments to allow a slightly late score. In addition, I had already taken the Physics GRE 2 years ago (and did poorly, but my retake wasn't that much better!) so I was still able to submit a temporary score.

So I feel like if you ask for extra time to take the General GRE, you might look like you are unprepared -- after all, you had all year to plan for it. Maybe the school won't even look at the packages until the end of January so that they won't care if you submit the scores a bit late though. But maybe they don't want to set a precedent for accepting late scores. Perhaps you could check with 1 or 2 of your schools and see how they react -- if it's very negative, then just take the test earlier! Good luck.

[Pinkman]

Thanks (again!!) TakeruK, pretty much what I thought but just figured I'd put it out there in case someone had success with this in the past. I suppose I'll get down to some rigorous studying!

I will say, however, I do think most schools permit (indirectly) a delay in scores because they applications are assessed some weeks after the deadline.

[TakeruK]

I will say, however, I do think most schools permit (indirectly) a delay in scores because they applications are assessed some weeks after the deadline.

I agree, but I don't think they will publicize this, or more and more people will submit scores later, and making it much harder for them to put the application packages together for the committee to review. They might be able to handle a few late scores so they might say yes if you ask nicely, but if I feel like if your only reason is "I want more time to study", that might not go over very well! And it might send the message that you are unprepared.