Should You Re-Take the GRE?

Some aspiring graduate school students take the GRE and exceed their expectations. Some score well below their target score. From the perspective of whether you should retake the GRE, these are the easy cases. The answer in the former case is “no” and in the latter case it’s generally “yes.” But in the latter case, you will generally need to plan on doing some substantial prep before you re-take the GRE.

But what if your GRE score was a bit below your target score? What if you were hoping for 325, your practice scores were 320-325, and you ended up with a 315. Should you re-take the GRE then? Most graduate school programs have no problem accepting and focusing on the highest GRE score you submit. You really won’t be penalized for taking the exam a few times. So, as a general rule, re-taking the GRE is a possibility many aspiring grad school students should consider. Here are the 5 Questions to Ask Yourself:


1. Do you have target schools and a target GRE score identified?

Before you can begin to consider re-taking the GRE, you need to have target graduate schools identified and an understanding of the target score that will put you in a good spot to get admitted, all else equal. If you aren’t really sure if you are targeting an average grad school program or an elite one, it’s hard to know if you should re-take the GRE or not. You don’t know what score you need. This may seem obvious, but you might be surprised at how many people don’t have clear answers to these questions.

If you don’t have an answer, you need to figure out your target score before moving on to the subsequent questions in this article.

2. How did your scores on the official GRE compare to your practice GRE scores?

Before you take the official GRE, you should have taken a number of full-length, timed practice tests under real testing conditions to measure your progress. Any good GRE study plan would include this type of preparation. You should treat these practice tests like test day. You want to see how you do under as much “real” test day stress as you can reasonably create. If you did not take a number of timed practice tests before sitting for the GRE, and you are wondering whether to re-take it, you almost certainly should re-take it, because you neglected to do one of the most important types of GRE prep in not taking real practice exams. So, let’s assume you took those timed practice exams.

Without even comparing your actual GRE score to your target score, you can compare your actual score to your timed practice scores to get a solid steer on whether to re-take the GRE. Assume you had a detailed study plan. You studied for 3 months. You had a private GRE tutor who you worked well with. You took several timed practice tests. And, your official GRE scores, by section, were generally in line with your practice GRE scores. In fact, on quant, you’d only scored higher than your official score on one practice exam. Your target GRE score was 325, and you got a 320. But your timed practice GRE scores were: 315, 319, 321, 318, and another 318.

In a situation like this, there isn’t a strong argument for re-taking the GRE, at least not without extensive additional prep time. You seem to have performed reasonably close to your potential. As long as you are close to or near your target score and the average of the programs to which you are applying (see next section) feel free to move past the GRE and focus on the reset of your application.
Now, what if you got those same scores above on practice exams, but then you got a 308. In this case, you may have just had a bad day. Re-taking the GRE is probably a good idea, even without substantial additional study time. Comparing your actual to your target score can help you determine how urgently you should consider re-taking it, but all signs point to you having just had a bad day. This is also a comparison that can be done by section (see question four).

3. How close to your target score were you?

Now, let’s stick with our example above. Your target score was 325. You got a 320. But that 320 was in line with your timed practice GRE scores. Should you re-take the GRE, knowing that extensive additional prep time is probably required to boost your score? At this point, you need to really think about your actual score relative to your target score. And, because we already know your actual score was in line with your practice scores, if you do end up needing to take it again, you’ll want to do something different with your preparation before you sit for it again.

Now, let’s say you scored a 160 on Verbal and 160 on quant to get to your 320. These are very solid scores, but not spectacular. Your goal has always been to get admitted to a top 10 MBA program, and you really don’t care which one. This score is in fact close to the average for a few top ten MBA programs. But you were hoping and thinking you might get an even higher score. Your 320 hits the average for Dartmouth, and gets you pretty close to Booth, and Berkeley.

In this situation, too many students decide to re-take the GRE, when there is not a strong reason to do so. The GRE or GMAT is only one part of the admissions process. With limited time and resource, once you have a solid score, invest your time elsewhere. Refine your essays. Seek the best possible recommendations. These are steps that may have a more positive impact on your application than scoring just a few points higher on the GRE. Now, let’s assume you got a 320, but you want to apply to Stanford, Yale, and Harvard. Now, your score appears low relative to the averages of those specific schools. And remember, your actual score was not out of line with your practice scores, so you need to be planning for some extensive additional prep before you re-take the GRE.

4. When you compare your target score or timed practice scores to your actual GRE score, what is the breakdown by section?

Some of what we’ve covered already could change if there are dramatic differences in your performance by section. For example, what if your target was 325, and you got a 320. And that 320 was in line with your practice GRE scores. However, a few times on your practice GRE exams, you actually performed much better on quant than you did on the actual exam, an exam in which you did very well on verbal. In this case, you may have an argument for a quick re-take, even without much prep, betting that your performance on verbal will hold, and that your performance on quant will normalize.

In any case, if you don’t do that much additional prep, be sure to follow the 80/20 rule with your prep, both across and within sections. If holding your quant score steady and improving your verbal score by 10 points will get you to your target, whether you re-take the GRE quicky or spend extensive time studying, allocate more of your time to verbal. And even within verbal, study your detailed score report. Focus improving your weaker areas, spending just enough time elsewhere to avoid unexpected negative surprises in areas of the exam you are already confident.

5. Do you have enough time to study meaningfully, re-take the GRE, receive your score, and submit your application?

As we’ve discussed, it’s not just about whether you have enough time to get your new score to target schools. It’s also about whether you have any reason to believe your score would be different without substantial additional GRE prep. You need to compare your GRE score to your practice score, and make that comparison by section. But mechanically, timing and application deadlines do matter. if you send your scores to schools while in the test center, immediately after you take the GRE and view your unofficial GRE scores, they’ll be received by schools 10-15 days after you take the test. So, roughly, if you are sitting here today considering whether to re-take the GRE, and you have ~3 weeks before the application deadline (call it one month), you can physically get your new scores to schools as part of your application. But the other question is, do you have enough time to study meaningfully?

If you just received your official score and are unhappy, it’s possible you were bracing for this. You were a wreck on test day because of a personal issue. You were sick. You were late and were rushing. And in fact, you’ve studied quite a lot and are well prepared. You have lots of timed practice exams with much higher scores. In this case, perhaps not much more studying needs to occur. You just need to re-take the exam and not have such an unlucky test day experience. However, if you thought you would perform well, but simply did not, taking the test again without studying doesn’t make a ton of sense. If you compare your actual score to your practice scores and your target score, and it’s not clear that you tanked, yet you clearly underperformed, something went wrong. You may need to assess how you prepared and do something different before you take the test again. Of course, if your scores are just really low, and you NEED to apply this round, take it again. But if you don’t have enough time to study meaningfully, don’t have such high expectations.

Here is a flow chart to help you think through your decision.


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So, you are going to re-take the GRE? What next?

If you are going to re-take the GRE, and it’s not just because of a bad test day experience, you need to make sure you do something different. Whatever you did the first time did not result in the score you wanted. A wise person once said that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing repeatedly but expecting a different result.
If you studied like crazy, but on your own, using almost all free materials, perhaps it’s time to try some “premium” test prep materials, either live or self-paced. If you took a one-size-fits all class, maybe you should consider working with a private GRE tutor. Here are some basic tenets of GRE prep that everyone should follow, but certainly all who are re-taking the GRE:

• Establish a target GRE score
  
• Build a customized study plan from whatever materials you are using. You have unique strengths and weaknesses.
• Get expert support to help you unpack missed questions so you can avoid similar mistakes in the future (this doesn’t need to be a GRE tutor, it could be as simple as detailed videos that explain how to do a problem)
• Given yourself enough time to meaningfully study differently before taking it again.
• Avoid the illusion of mastery when you are studying. Many students see difficult GRE problems during their GRE practice, and don’t quite know how to do them. They seem familiar, but they aren’t 100% sure. So, they open the book. Immediately, it becomes obvious how to do the problem, and the feel they now understand. But doing that again and again does not mean you understand. If you truly understand a concept, you’ll be able to confidently answer the question without checking the book, and explain why it works that way to someone else.

Bottom Line:

Whether you should re-take the GRE or not is a personal question. But there are some clear, objective principles you can follow. If your score was below your target, you have the time, and you know you could have studied more. You should almost certainly re-take the GRE/ It’s not an IQ test. With the right type of practice, you will improve your score. But if you just narrowly missed your target score, never really did better on practice exams, and studied a lot, simply re-taking the GRE without substantial additional study using a new method is unlikely to result in a higher score. If you don’t study differently and practice before you take it again, you may do worse.