Physics GRE Discussion Forums

Hi All,

I just took the general GRE test yesterday and did okay with quantitative (700) but rather dismally with verbal (430). I am not an international student and have a decent undergraduate GPA. I am looking at the Physics programs at UMD, Georgetown, GWU, JHU, CUA, or UMBC (I want to stay in the DC area). University of Maryland (College Park) however is my top choice school.

I am currently an NIH fellow (2 years), have a previous co-authorship in a publication in another lab that I worked with during undergrad, and have presented at a few conferences.

Should I retake or just focus on doing well on the PGRE? Thanks and good luck!

How much do you think you could improve your scores by? When you took the practice exams what kind of scores were you getting? I think you should aim to get your verbal score above 500, but honestly 700 quantitative is almost as big a problem. If your results are in line with your practice exams, then it would take a lot of effort to improve your scores significantly (and significant changes are the only ones that really matter). If that's the case that energy might be better spent preparing for the physics GRE. However, if you think you could easily score better, I would say definitely retake.

To reiterate what grae said: retake them if you think you'll actually improve your scores. 430 vs 440 makes no difference, but 530 vs 430 could make a difference. That being said, the PGRE is far more important. I had pretty dismal reg GRE scores (check my profile in 2010 but I think I had 670 quant and 510 verbal) and my PGREs wasn't great, but I'm still going to Ohio State next year. So I think it partly depends on the program you're applying to.

For somewhere like UMD though, it might be a bigger deal. UMD is (as far as I understand it) a *very* competitive program to get into. For that school, you might want to make sure your application doesn't have any red flags like a low GRE score (I don't know anything about the other programs you listed).

Great. Thanks. I was obtaining about 550 verbal on the practice tests. I heard from my undergraduate academic advisor that graduate schools really only care about your quantitative and PGRE score so I wasn't sure it'd be worth the time or money of retaking them. I'm going to though in a month though. Thanks for your responses.

I had the same verbal score and the same concern. You may be interested in checking out my profile in the 2010 Applicant Profiles thread. If mine isn't close enough to yours in other ways then there are several other profiles with similar verbal scores from domestic students. Good luck!