GRE dirty little secret

[champagne]

Because the sheer numbers of this daunting process can seem intimidating, I think it's easy to think you have to be "perfect" to get into a program. I put "perfect" into quotations because, as many students of aesthetics will tell you, being "perfect" is just as subjective as anything. While you feel like your entire academic career may boil down to certain numbers, just remember that everything in this process is driven by fit. There are some programs that feel like their fit only lies within a certain quantified range of test scores. There are other programs that are more holistic in their approach to statistics. That said, you do want to put your best foot forward by doing as well as you can on both the subject and general GRE. Just don't construct it to be the end of the world if you don't reach a certain stratum of scores.  

[asleepawake]

I love you. Love you. Love you.

I'm in a shitty commuter school (better gpa [but likely shittier school]) and you are my inspiration. Wellllll inspiration is a little dramatic- listen- you give me hope for 2014.

 

Aww, you are loved in return. I applied quite widely and I think this is key, especially when you have these kinds of things working against you in the first place. You can totally do it!

 

Now for a completely ignorant question: what exactly is a commuter school? Please don't laugh, I'm foreign!

 

Of course it's good to have the numbers behind you, but we're all got what we've got, so I think it's beneficial to focus on what you can still change. Your old grades are not among those things, unfortunately.

 

A commuter school is is basically a lower-ranked regional or state University that caters mostly to students who commute to campus. They often offer a lot of night classes and have students who skew older than your average state University. There aren't a lot of dorms and greek life barely exists, and they aren't exactly known for their academic rigor. That said, I liked my school, but at the time I did not have graduate school in mind. The school offers a limited number of graduate degrees, and has a decent law-school, and actually includes one particularly strong department (not English!), but it doesn't look impressive on transcripts. 

[smellybug]

Not to rain on anyone's anal parade or anything, but I think that the role of the GRE remains, in any institution, very peripheral.

This is my first time applying and I got accepted at Yale, Cornell and Rutgers with a cumulative V/Q score of 304 (and I only took it once)... Every program that accepted me wrote to remark on how both my SOP and writing sample (combined with my research interests) were responsible for making me an attractive candidate for their programs.

Anal parade? Are there floats? And candy?

It seems that in many fields the GRE is a gatekeeping mechanism, which means that no, it's not important... Unless it is. That is, unless it's an arbitrary factor that screens you out. Obviously, all sorts of things are at play here. Sure, some people get into schools (even Ivies) with so-so GRE scores. However, I don't think it's good advice to disregard it entirely because of some anecdotal evidence. Some of the schools I spoke with told me it matters; others said it didn't. In my case, I had a few strikes against me and wasn't willing to take any chances. I'm glad I didn't. That said, who knows if I would have gotten the same acceptances with a lower score? It's clear that no one's going to tell you they were super impressed with your GRE scores and that made you an attractive candidate...

Edited March 28, 2013 by smellybug