How bad is this (scored lower second time!)

[emilywantstogetin]

Hello!

I am a non-native English speaker, and I've always been better at Quantitative than Verbal. I'm applying for music phD programs. When I applied for my master's in music performance, I knew GRE was just a format so I took it cold-- I had a good night of sleep, coffee, and no studying, and I scored V460 Q750 AW4.5.

A year and a half later, I am switching to an area where GRE actually counts. I studied for 3 months, mostly on verbal but other things, too. I was scoring 550-600V and 750-800Q on practice tests. Obviously I don't know what I would get on AW, but I generally felt good abotu them.

The fews days leading up to GRE I was very anxious, as I was sick and a lot of random shit was piling on (computer burned with my term paper on it, etc...bad things.) On the day of, I was placed at a desk behind the testing room door, which was loud and i keep getting jammed. After the AW section I complained to the proctor and asked to change seats but she denied. The rest of the test was hell, as I had a hard time concentrating. I scored V510 Q650 AW4.0.

This is lower than a year ago, when I expected my score to improve! On the plus side, for my field they really only care about Verbal, so I guess this is a small victory. But I felt awful! Notwithstanding the fact that I could've done better, I feel sick just thinking about how my score didn't improve and got worse.

I'm going to take it again on Dec 19th, in a different testing center. I'm also not going to do the two hour drive the morning of, but instead I'm driving out the night before.

But what do you guys think? How bad does this look? I don't want grad schools to think that I've been putting my brain on hold for the year and half between the two tests. I just had a really off day and I really should have canceled the score.

[a fragrant plant]

Your Q is lower than your previous attempt. But your V jumped from 460 to 510. You sure this is called bad? I guess it depends on your field.