Which GRE scores should I send?

[steph4]

Any advice on my situation would be beyond helpful. 

I took the GRE end of last year without much practice (used a practice book and did some practice questions) and got a 147 V 154 Q and 3.5 writing. I decided I could do better and signed up for an online class and took the GRE again in June and got 148 V 150 Q and still waiting on the writing. I'm utterly confused about my scores seeing as I felt way more confident on this second exam. 

But anyways, which scores should I send to graduate school? I'll be applying for my PhD in the fall and have a 3.7 GPA, 3 years of undergraduate research, currently work at Sloan Kettering Cancer Center and volunteering at Weill Cornell. 

What are your thoughts?

Thanks so much! 

[Apogeee]

They look pretty similar without knowing the percentiles. You could send all of your scores, or the most recent ones. Did the percentile scores change? What department are you applying to? Anyway, wait for the writing results before you make up your mind.  

 

[steph4]

It's actually very different percentile wise .. 150 Q is 40th and 154 is 56th while 147 V is 33 and 148 is 37 (not so different) 

definitely going to wait on the writing score

i'm appying for a phd in the biomedical sciences 

[TakeruK]

4 hours ago, Apogeee said:

They look pretty similar without knowing the percentiles. You could send all of your scores, or the most recent ones. Did the percentile scores change? What department are you applying to? Anyway, wait for the writing results before you make up your mind.  

The percentiles change every year and show how your scaled score compares to other scaled scores for test takers in a 3 year period. Each summer, ETS publishes a guide for interpreting scores. The most recent edition, for the 2015-2016 school year, can be found: https://www.ets.org/s/gre/pdf/gre_guide.pdf. In this version, the percentile scores show how you rank vs. other test takers from August 1, 2011 to June 30, 2014. Note that this is not quite a full 3 year cycle because the Revised GRE came into effect on August 1, 2011.

When they update this for the 2016-2017 school year, I expect the percentile scores will reflect how a scaled score compares to all test takers from July 1, 2012 to June 30, 2015. This is a new 3 year period and since the Revised test is so recent, this could mean a change in percentile scores that's bigger than most years. But it's not certain.

Note: The reason why I think it's a 3 year cycle is because this is how they do the Subject test scores and this was how they did the General GRE score (before the Revised General GRE). 

Anyways, my point is that don't be surprised if the percentile scores that show up this fall are different than what is shown now, because ETS has not yet released the tables for 2016-2017.

4 hours ago, steph4 said:

It's actually very different percentile wise .. 150 Q is 40th and 154 is 56th while 147 V is 33 and 148 is 37 (not so different) 

definitely going to wait on the writing score

i'm appying for a phd in the biomedical sciences 

If the AW scores were exactly the same, I would go with the 147V/154Q score instead of the 148V/150Q score because the 4 points on the Q is a bigger effect than 1 point on the V. But I do think that both scores are quite similar. You might also consider sending both sets of scores since they are so similar.

If your second test (148V/150Q) comes with a AW score of 4.5 or higher, then I think the second set of scores is stronger than the first.