Should I retake the GRE for Chem PhD?

haplophytine
Sat, 24 Jul 2010 23:40:44 +0000

Hi all, sorry for the long post, but please bear with me. I took the GRE 2 days ago, and I was very disappointed with my score: 630V 760Q. Haven’t received writing score yet but I’m just hoping for a 4 given what happened.

I knew I should’ve taken this more seriously than to spend just a weekend cramming for it. I’m kicking myself really hard right now, but alas I must suffer the consequences.

I’ll be going into my 5th and final year as a chem major this upcoming September (biochem—>chem switch held me back a year) at the University of Toronto. GRE aside, all my other credentials are pretty good:

-3.9+ GPA (3.99 in major)
-UROP for a summer, NSERC (Canadian equivalent of REU) for 2 summers, although one summer was doing biochem stuff, and 1 semester of volunteer work. I’ll also be doing a senior project for my last year in undergrad.
-Should be able to get good references, as long as I don’t screw up my senior project

I’m mainly looking at the top 10-30 schools and a few top 10 schools for a PhD in synthesis/catalysis. Right now the list looks something like this:

-Ann Arbor
-Chicago
-Columbia
-Cornell (actually might cross this one off since Paul Chirik is moving to Princeton)
-Duke
-Princeton
-Purdue
-UIUC
-UW-Madison
-UPenn

Yeah I know it’s huge, I have fairly broad interests and they have a lot of interesting stuff going on at those places. Eventually I hope to narrow it down to 6.

Anyway my plan is to get some relevant industrial experience for a year or two before I head off to grad school – to make some money and give me some idea of what industry is like. I still need to take the chem GRE, but that can wait considering I have at least 2 years before going to grad school.

I know I could’ve done much better, since I actually got 800Q on both practice tests in Powerprep. The main issue I had when doing the real thing was time management. I ran out of time and couldn’t even write a conclusion for my Issue essay. Same thing with quant, I double/triple checked for the first 7 questions, and kept second-guessing myself. When I got to question 20 I had 5 minutes left!!! I rushed like mad and literally randomly guessed the last 4 questions. Pathetic, I know. I guess part of the reason is because I was too nervous, given my lack of practice.

I’m not sure what those school’s policies are on retakes, but I’m hoping as long as I show significant improvement (eg 700V 800Q 6AW) they wouldn’t hold it against me. But if I get anything below a 4 on writing then I’m retaking it for sure. Otherwise I probably don’t even stand a chance.

But let’s say if I got a 4 in writing, do you think it’d be worth my while to retake the general GRE? For physical sciences I know they definitely pay more attention to quant. A 760 isn’t the end of the world, but I think it’s pretty bad considering where I’ll be applying to. Also there’s always the “what if” factor – what if my application gets filtered just because of a 760Q, what if there are several applicants with similar qualifications but better quant scores yada yada. And I think a few of the schools I looked at said GRE scores will be considered in awarding fellowships and stuff like that. So yeah, I’m worried.