PhD in Economics - Should I retake GRE?

[deanavery]

I plan to apply to top twenty departments in Economics. My verbal score (163 - 91%) and my analytical writing (5.0 - 93%) are in my opinion quite good for my subject and the country I am from, but what may possibly cause a problem is my borderline quantitative score, which is 166 (93%). 

 

I had a couple of B's in my mathematics classes in my sophomore year, so I was hoping that I could signal that my quantitative reasoning has improved since then with my GRE score, but it is far from perfect. So I wanted to ask your opinion on whether I should retake GRE. I might be able to improve my Q score, but almost certainly I would lose some points in V because it has been a very long time since I took the exam.

[sunpenguin]

I think anything above the 90th percentile speaks very positively of your skills. From looking around, it seems that anything above 160 is generally good, and anything above 165 makes you competitive for the top programs in any field.