Can "Okay" CS GRE hurt?

[hahakk]

Hi,

I got CS GRE 81 percentile.I already sent it to all schools because I thought I did pretty well, but turned out that I did a little worse than I expected.

Such score seems to be an okay score, but I am wondering whether it could hurt in any way, especially for top schools where I believe a lot of applicants who choose to submit CS GRE scores will have very high scores.

Based on my knowledge, I wouldn't have needed CS GRE anyway since I am from a well-known school and majored in CS.

After all, I am not sure what options I have at this point other than not reporting the scores on the application (although the scores have been sent by ETS).

Thanks!

Edited December 10, 2012 by hahakk

[ab2013]

I remember reading here that someone posted that 85 %ile is about where T10 looks for, but some schools have told me that they told even look at the CS GRE anyways.

[smmmu]

Quoting almost verbatim from what a faculty member at a top-20 school wrote to me on that topic:

* 85th percentile is the lower threshold of what you should aim for.

* Very high subject test scores can help your application, but weak ones don't necessarily count against you.

So I wouldn't worry too much. It's not gonna help you, but it won't hurt you either.

From what I've heard from a number of people, the top 4 schools generally don't care about your GRE to begin with.