If you are applying for grad school, you are likely going to have to take the GRE test. The GRE, which stands for Graduate Records Examinations, is a test designed to help your prospective school determine your level of proficiency at certain skills you will need to do well in graduate school. The scores from your GRE are typically a part of the application package for each school. Likely, if you’re reading this, you are already aware of the need to take the GRE test and might even be prepping for the test already.
We know that getting everything together for your grad school application can be stressful and time consuming, especially if you are applying for multiple programs. You have to put together personal statements, gather letters of recommendations, request your transcripts and complete the application itself. The administrators of the GRE know this too, and have done many things to make getting your scores submitted to your schools as easy as possible. Here are some answers to common questions about the GRE.
How do I send my scores to GRE and when do I do it?
The answer to this question really depends on how you are taking the test. Right now, there are two ways to take the test; a paper test or a computer test. If you are taking the paper test, you’ll provide information on where you want the scores sent when you register to take the test. If you are taking the computer test, you’ll provide that information on test day.
How many schools can I list?
The GRE will send your scores to up to four different schools for free. These are the schools you’d list on test day. You can’t list more than four schools to automatically send your scores to. You can provide additional schools to send your scores to, but there is a small fee for each additional school and you’d need to wait until after test day to make your request.
What if I take the test multiple times?
It’s not uncommon for students applying to graduate programs to take the GRE multiple times to try to get the best score possible. The administrators of the GRE know this and have created a feature called ScoreSelect. When you take the GRE, you’ll get a preliminary score the day you take the test. After you have that preliminary score, you can decide which set of scores to send the school – either this new set of scores or one of your previous scores. This way you are always sending your best to your prospective schools.
The only thing is, you must send your complete test. You can’t, for example, send your verbal reasoning scores from one test and your analytical writing scores from your third test. This means that you’ll want to select what you feel is your best overall score to send to your prospective schools. You also will have the option to send all of your scores from all recent tests to each school.
