Does going from 910 to 790 raise a flag?

[ukycme]

I took the pgre in october and november. I did well in October, 910, and took it again in november, because I didn't know yet that I had done that well. I thought I did better, given that the first time I finished with about 10 minutes to spare, and the second time I finished with 1 hour(maybe this was the problem), and had time to check over most questions. But I did worse, 790, and I was really surprised.

How would you view this, and how much do you think admissions will discount the 910 because of 790 following it.

 

[Jorriss]

I can't remember from my applications. Are you required to report both?

 

[jedishrfu]

Sme schools will take the best grade and others may average them together. But I think the trend is to take the best grade. You could check with grad admissions to see how they treat it and whether the physics dept will even see the lower score.

There is some variability in the GRE tests, remember some sections are actually test sections for future tests that aren't graded but they can sometime discourage the test taker and thus adversely affect their score.

 

[Lavabug]

You're looking at this the wrong way. A 790 is a good score and will get you into many good schools. A 910 is a very high score and the same is true. The order in which you achieved them is pretty irrelevant if you ask me.

My adviser tells me if you score above a 700, how much you get really doesn't matter. One of his students got into Caltech with that score. I've also heard 600-650 is acceptable from a top 25-30 (I think) school's admissions director.

 

[ukycme]

Yeah, your probably right, the 790 will be fine for most schools I'm applying to, it was just Cornell and Columbia that I was mostly concerned about.

And I tried to cancel the reporting of the second score for the schools I listed during registration, but I can't. Otherwise, I wouldn't even be worrying about it since you can select with score to send out. But they're going to see both so I got concerned. I'm sure the first day of finals didn't help the anxiety either...