URGENT: I made a blunder

[xudis149]

I have given my general gre a week back and scored 1360 [800+560].
I have made a blunder.
In subject gre I gave my full name and in the general gre I gave my abbreviated name.
In short, ETS refuses to list both my general and subject scores together in a single scorecard

Hence, I am thinking of giving General Gre again on December 12th or December 15th. So I have two doubts.

1. Except for Purdue[Jan 1st] all the universities on my list have there last date as Jan15th or Feb 1st. Am I in deep trouble if I give General Gre on DEC 15th. Will scores reach in time??

2. I have given my last GRE General exam on Nov24th 2008. Am i allowed to take it on any date between December 10th to December 15th? Does that mean both days are in different calender months or is there a need for 30 days gap.

It would be really greatful if someone who has faced anything similar can suggest something..
Please do comment

[sterculus]

How many schools are you applying to? Would it be cheaper to send two score reports to each school? If you explained the situation to the schools I'm sure they would be ok with two separate reports.

[xudis149]

to around 15. That works out to almost 30 times 20 dollars ~600 dollars..

another thing I am not whole a lot confident about is scoring 1360 again in general gre....

what do you think abt is December 15 too late for me??

If I list Purdue as one of the 4 score recipients after my general gre on December 15th, then they may get score by 1st week of Jan. Would that be too late considering there last date is Jan 1st..?'

And what the heck is a calender month..?

[tmc]

1 month is more than enough for the scores to get there, you'll be fine for that. Your scores probably won't change much (quant might drop to 790 due to bad luck and verbal is always pretty random, but neither should affect your application)

That being said, I'm surprised your deadlines are so far. Almost all of mine are a good month earlier than yours

[xudis149]

well i am applying to mostly lower ranked universities. Highest being Purdue and UFL which has deadline of Feb 1st.

Actually I am an international applicant and an electrical engineer on top of it.. So I am pretty pragmatic about my chances..
hopefully PGRE comes out good...thanks for the advice guys..

any other views/similar experience anyone else has please do share..

[stardust]

If you haven't sent the score reports out yet, call up ETS and tell them to combine the score reports
under the same name. You must have had the same reporting info, address and birthdate and you can
FAX them proof. I think they do this on purpose to make more money. Ask to speak to a manager at ETS.

[xudis149]

No I haven't sent score reports yet...

and i did call them and also mail them..
i got two different responses...

1. The guy on the help-desk was saying he will merge both of it by Saturday which has not hapened till now.
2. I had also sent a mail to gre-info@ets.org. Those guys replied after a week telling it against there policy to combine it... Jerks

i am confused ... don't know what to do...
have to spend money again for gre and then i am not sure about getting similar results too!!


..alas!! only if they could merge...

[quizivex]

The best thing to try first (as stardust said) is to settle the matter with ETS to combine the reports, and if that doesn't work then (as sterculus said) just send two reports to each school and and tell each one that your two names are the same person.

Yes you could retake it as early as Dec 1st, since it's a new calendar month, but I would not recommend taking it again just to get the scores on the same report. Your scores from a new test would get to all the schools in time (except perhaps Purdue), but 560 verbal is more than decent for international students, and you don't deserve the hassle of taking it again. If you send extra reports now, they'll definitely get to all the schools in time.

1. The guy on the help-desk was saying he will merge both of it by Saturday which has not hapened till now.
2. I had also sent a mail to gre-info@ets.org. Those guys replied after a week telling it against there policy to combine it... Jerks

They are so disorganized. Talk to a different person, you get a different answer. ETS is a disgrace. The person responding to those e-mails might not know anything... try calling the hotline and ask for a "manager" and plead your case.

[stardust]

Also, ask them to take care of it over the phone while you wait.

You really shouldn't have to pay an extra $130 for another test or an extra $15 per school for an extra set of
reports. Then you might mess up again and put the extra generals on the original generals report and still have
no combined subject general report .

ETS is extremely inept at anything and it may take 10 phones calls. If I ever got mad at some
beaurocratic incompetence, I would call each day until I got what I wanted done. Sometimes,
the way those things work is that you get different people each time you call and one person
might actually be the lone competent person at ETS.

BUT, I ultimately think they want to charge 2 fees so they make more money.

You can wear them down though.

Then, when someone tells you its done, before you pay for sending things out, I would call
back a day later to make sure. As long as you are polite on the phone, then should give you info.

[stardust]

If you can get separate reports as if you were 2 different people, maybe we can all do that to
improve our pgre score, i.e. if we don't like our score, just give ourselves a knickname and generate
a whole new report. Cool possibilities for this ETS incompetence. We can use it too our
advantage .

[xudis149]

Thank you quizivex and stardust for the suggestions....

I am pretty sure clocking 560 again in verbal is a pretty tough task.. especially since i have not yet contacted all of my profs for reccomendations...and lot of work remains..

I have invested 10 dollars in skype to make international calls to ETS.. otherwise if i were to call from landline

I am going to flood ETS with suck-calls for three-four days.. if it doesn't work out then I will write general gre again ..what else can I do...

I have checked the status online at https://web1.gre.org/GreWebReg/asrLogin.jsp

Here it is not showing both the general and subject tests under my registration details..
In fact it doesn't even accept my Last Name as "S", but ETS allowed me to register for GRE general test with my Last Name as "S".... What else to say abt ETS!!

anyways, I am going to try my luck....

[stardust]

At least with the computer generals you can see your scores right there and ultimately
send the better one.

I'm still wondering how they allowed you to make nicknames on your sheet just because you have
a big long name. We have to show id when we take the test. My name is too short to make
a nickname. I'm sure they would have stopped me. To some of us, new gre reports would be
a gift , a chance to erase what we didn't like before the 5 year score hold period is up. You
are a genius for figuring that out! Be proud or finding a loophole in a beaurocracy.

[GCS]

sidharthsp,

I also made a stupid mistake with the physics gre. When filling out my name, I accidentally wrote my first and last name in the wrong boxes, and when we had to double check our name all the spelling looked fine and since some places write first/last, and other last/first I didn't notice I had switched them when registering.
I eventually realized and when I called ETS they said that there were two different files.
Bottom line, after a number of calls (and having to fax them a copy of my drivers license and a signed statement with my information and registration number), they eventually merged them together.

At this point I had actually already sent my score reports, but surprisingly ETS was nice enough to resend my scores for free after the files had been merged (although it took them a little while, and maybe a couple more calls, don't remember).

Good luck!

[xudis149]

@stardust

In my country it is pretty common to use the first letter of last name instead of the long version. And the GRE general registration web page allowed me to use the smaller version but the gre subject did not allow me to do so. Apparently that is where the conflict happened.
Say your name is Will Smith may be you can try registering as Will S. In my test centre they just checked for the first name on my passport. Hence it worked. If this loophole works at your place too..then eureka!


@GCS
Thanks for sharing!!
I am really elated to hear about your experience. Because ultimately this is what I also want to get done. I really do not want to take the stupid test again..

[grae313]

sorry I haven't read the other responses so this may have already been mentioned, but have you called the universities you are applying to and explained the situation? If not, call them up! Tell them what happened. They'll tell you the best option and when you open those lines of communication, the people on the other end are almost always extremely helpful and understanding.

I have given my general gre a week back and scored 1360 [800+560].
I have made a blunder.
In subject gre I gave my full name and in the general gre I gave my abbreviated name.
In short, ETS refuses to list both my general and subject scores together in a single scorecard

Hence, I am thinking of giving General Gre again on December 12th or December 15th. So I have two doubts.

1. Except for Purdue[Jan 1st] all the universities on my list have there last date as Jan15th or Feb 1st. Am I in deep trouble if I give General Gre on DEC 15th. Will scores reach in time??

2. I have given my last GRE General exam on Nov24th 2008. Am i allowed to take it on any date between December 10th to December 15th? Does that mean both days are in different calender months or is there a need for 30 days gap.

It would be really greatful if someone who has faced anything similar can suggest something..
Please do comment

[xudis149]

i had called ETS many times yesterday, everybody giving different responses. Some asked me to send a fax with ID copy and wait for a week and others told me it is a lost case and nothing can be done.

I can't afford waiting one week, as dates are fast filling up, so I am taking up the exam this Friday..

I hope I will cross 1300 at least..

@grae313

I am not sure about calling each university as I am applying close to 15 of them.
Then being an international applicant they might look with suspicion over difference in name for gre general and subject.

[xudis149]

Must have made more than 30 calls to ETS and 2 faxes and lots of emails.....
but to no avail...
made so many calls that guys at ETS would start saying "that's not possible.." as soon as I tell my name...

hence had to repeat the test and score got reduced by 40 points to 1320 from 1360...
more sad was loosing 20 points in Quant.... new score is 780 out of 800

is 780 a bad score in quant...??

f**k ETS !!
incompetent guys who can't resolve such petty issues...

[secander2!]

That really freaking sucks! Fortunately, I don't think there's much difference between a 780 and an 800 (at least I hope there's not since I've got a 790), I think most admissions committees realize that it's easy to make one or two stupid mistakes and not get that 800. Also, as long as your PGRE is fine, I doubt the General GRE matters much.

[xudis149]

Thanks secander2

I think most admissions committees realize that it's easy to make one or two stupid mistakes and not get that 800. Also, as long as your PGRE is fine, I doubt the General GRE matters much.

Can't tell you how consoling that was
i just hope now that the PGRE crosses 80 percentile...

[quizivex]

ah ***, sorry to hear the retest didn't go as well. Don't worry about the 780... once you graduate with a degree in physics, they know you can read a pie chart and identify what three numbers could be lengths of the sides of a triangle... you just made an arithmetic error, lol.

ETS is so incompetent. I was given misleading info tons of times, and one of them led to a blunder of my own, when I considered rescoring the WGRE. They told me over the phone I could rescore upto two times, so I decided to give it a try. They dropped my score a whole point. When I frantically sent in a second rescore request, they wrote back saying we can only do it once... If I had known that, I would not have risked it the first time.

Since ETS headquarters are supposedly somewhere in Princeton maybe I should pay them a "visit" for both of us.

It's kindof disappointing that they weren't able to merge your scores since they did it for GCS. I guess he happened to call a friendly operator.

[xudis149]

@quizivex

Don't worry about the 780... once you graduate with a degree in physics, they know you can read a pie chart and identify what three numbers could be lengths of the sides of a triangle... you just made an arithmetic error, lol.

I agree.. general GRE is an absolutely redundant test.... => sour grapes..
Sad to know you lost points
780 is so disappointing, after getting 800 once, more so when you make mistakes in high school maths..

Anyways, I am thinking of sending both my scores at least to the top 4~5 institutes in my list....The ETS said they will do that for free...or maybe they were just showing me oasis...

If you are visiting ETS, I know name of few of their really moron agents ....