Should I take GRE?

GRE General
1

I got a score of 297 (146V 151Q) about a month ago. My goal is 323 (156V 167Q).

I’ve been studying 5-6 days a week for about 3 hours a day, but I recently got into two summer classes that require a lot of time. So now I’m spending close to 1-2 hours a day. Plus I am in several extracurricular activities that also take a lot of time, and I will be gone most of August so I won’t be able to consistently study.

I’m worried that my time studying for GRE will be wasted and I won’t get the score I want. I am also leaning towards not going to grad school in the next year, but I definitely want to go to grad school in the next 5 years.

Let me know what your thoughts are: I might just apply to schools that don’t require GRE right now, then study next Spring and summer once I have fewer classes then graduate and have more time. The only downside to this that I see is I am limited to the grad schools I apply to now. But let me know what you guys think! I appreciate any feedback and advice.

2

Bumping this up

3
  • Which university are you at right now, and what’s your GPA?
  • Which university do you aspire to go to, and for which field?
4

I am at University of Nevada: Las Vegas for mechanical engineering. I want to go into a top 10 aerospace engineering grad program (i.e. UT Austin, UCLA, Berkeley, Texas A&M). My current GPA is 3.6.

5

So amongst the schools you listed,

  • UT Austin - optional
  • UCLA - " The preferred GRE results are: Verbal, above the 79th percentile; Quantitative, above the 92 nd percentile;" - you’re substantially below that.
  • Texas A&M - not clear on whether it is waved for the 2022 cycle.

Regardless, you have two choices:

  • Apply for the universities that have waived the GRE
  • Improve your GRE score - because your quant is one standard deviation below the mean for something like mechanical engineering - and you do have a long way to go to meet UCLA’s preferred scores for instance. This does not mean that it’s a deal-breaker, but on that aspect, you’re weak.