Target GRE

[Jufarius87]

I know that given the diversity of backgrounds for applicants in our field that it is difficult to give an answer to this question but I have been looking for average GRE stats of MPP/MPA programs and found very little.

 

Assuming a candidate fairly recently out of college (2 years work exp) with a competitive academic background (3.7x/4.0, good majors) what sort of GRE is considered acceptable? I am admittedly a little nervous, I've always done "good" on standardized test but never been able to break into the top tier of them. 

 

My targets are Cornell (Location and unique MPA Concentration are ideal) and Texas A&M (Huge Army Network that for my purposes would serve better than an NYC/DC locale). Also applying to HKS/WWS/Georgetown/UPenn.

Edited November 10, 2013 by Jufarius87

[chocolatecheesecake]

Here are the numbers for Texas A&M (just scroll down) and for Georgetown (page 10 in the PDF). For more comparisons, here are a few more schools - Berkeley GSPP, USC Price. I feel better about schools I'm applying to where I'm at or above the average, and a little more queasy about the schools where I'm below the average (mostly just my quant score, bleh). Hopefully this helps. I think the GRE scores can buoy you up a bit if you don't have good grades, but if you have the nice GPA and a challenging academic background, they're a little less important as long as they're not terrible. 

 

Good luck!