Explaining a poor GRE score

[columbia09]

Has anyone had any luck with explaining a poor GRE score on an application? I wrote a short essay that I'll submit as a supplemental item. If you want to review it let me know and I'll pm it over

[columbia09]

Bump......

[fuzzylogician]

There have been people on this board who had low scores of some kind, be it GRE or GPA, and were successful in getting into good graduate programs.

I think writing anything that is more than a quick sentence or two is probably too much. I don't know what the circumstances are that led to your low score, nor how low is low and how this fits with other components of your application, but while you do want to acknowledge and explain any obvious red flags, you don't want to dwell on it and you don't want to sound like you're making excuses. A "short essay" sounds like it might be overkill.