Graduate Record Examination (GRE) Scores

A recent general Graduate Record Examination (GRE) is highly encouraged. To find out how to take these exams go to http://www.gre.org or contact:

Graduate Record Examinations
Educational Testing Services
P.O. BOX 6000
Princeton, NJ 08541-6000 USA
phone: 609-771-7670

General GRE Examination

The general GRE examination gives you a chance to demonstrate your proficiency in verbal, quantitative, and analytical skills. While high GRE scores are no guarantee of success in a graduate program, they do correlate well with success in graduate coursework. Your scores will be evaluated in the context of your background. For example, someone with more exposure to advanced technical courses with mathematical content will generally have a higher quantitative score than someone with less.

GRE Subject Examinations

A GRE subject examination is strongly recommended. It is important for you to understand the role of a GRE subject score in an application. The GRE subject examination gives you a chance to demonstrate your mastery of advanced material. Someone with more exposure to advanced courses will generally have a higher score than someone with less. A high score shows that you retained a high level of mastery of the material from those courses. To show you can do this greatly strengthens your application. You can use any technical subject to do this, not just the math subject exam. For example, if your undergraduate major was physics, you can take the physics subject exam. It is therefore clear that your GRE subject score will be evaluated in the context of your background.

A student who scores well on a GRE subject examination significantly strengthens their application because it indicates that the student has mastered a field with a minimum of formal training in it!