^^
169 on quantitative. 162 on verbal

Unless you've already been accepted. I pretty much bombed the GRE, but I had already started my graduate work. Not a recommended strategy, though.

Hm, I'm interested in Agroecology, would you call that a quantitative field? I got 167V/160Q today. I feel like this is probably good enough not to retake, but I'm all ears if yall disagree

I have no idea what that entails. Sounds like more quantitative though.

When in doubt, ask someone in the field or in admissions who might know better than us.

Did they recently change the GRE scale?

Thucy, what percentiles are you in? That's the only thing that has meaning.

The writing section also matters. A 4 or above is safe, 3.5 is ok if your other scores are strong, and 3 and below is iffy for many programs. I would check the average scores for your program. There are hard cutoffs for the selective programs and if you don't meet them, you are 99.5% unlikely to be invited for interviews UNLESS you have extenuating circumstances and/or done a great deal of research already to show that you are capable of doing the work. Some programs would actually reveal the cutoff scores if you can sweet-talk the secretary.

160 on verbal is on the lower end for selective programs but that's generic and not at all specific to your field.

Ask students who have already gotten into grad school in your field.
I believe mine was 760 verbal/800 quantitative on the old test. We won't talk about my writing score.

No, percentile is not the only thing with meaning. There are really hard cutoffs for programs and your research experience and academic recommendations.

GRE scale is now 130-170 on a bell curve, abge.

Yeah they changed the scale, you can find equivalences online.

Zultar, I think you misread. I got 167 verbal, 160 quantitative.

I won't know writing scores till later bur expect 5+

Looking at percentiles, my quantitative appears to be too 25% and verbal top 3%. I guess I feel pretty good about that, especially considering I only took one math class in undergrad.

And yeah I can see how Agroecology would sound more quantitative, but I'm not so sure. It's a lot of biology, geology, climate, botany, that sort of thing. Not that math isn't there, but from the basic plant and soil classes I've been taking this yesr to prepare, nothing extremely complex or obscure.

I've tried googling the expected scores for this field, but havent found anything. And of course im in touch with various programs and will be emailing them about GRE scores but I thought Id ask what everyone thinks a good general score is.

I think 170, 170 would be a good score. Everything below that is iffy.

A perfect score, seriously? That's kind of ridiculous. Theres no way they expect you to be like top 2%

He was making a joke, thucy.

160 quant is on the lower end but if it's not a heavy math field, that should be ok. And my apology for misreading, probably that's why I didn't do so well.

It is very dependent on the field, and there are a lot of idiosyncrasies even at the level of individual departments in determining what a good score is. When I wrote the GRE, I had been told that my quant score is all that would really matter for econ grad programs, so that's all I really focused on (I got an 800 back in the day - I don't even remember what my verbal score was).

For your program, they probably care about both scores since it sounds like there would be a fair amount of reading and writing. 167V is probably good enough for any program anywhere; 160Q might be borderline at a lot of places.

Figured as much. Thanks for the input all.

Letters of Rec
Publications
Research Experience
GPA/GRE

is the order things matter IMO for STEM

Apparently I got a 161, 167, 5 for scores. I think? I don't even know what the numbers mean anymore.

I also showed up a day early because I had it wrong on my calendar and didn't study at all. I didn't take the GREs very seriously; refer to the list I put above.

lol 154V/149Q

You're way ahead of me, Thucy!

I took it back with the old scores. Makes me feel old.

Your verbal score is really outstanding. Congratulations. I do tend to think that the quantitative is a little bit low, and I would *consider* retaking since you're going for a science field. You're right that it's on the less mathy side of science, but ecology can, at least, get pretty mathy (differential equations and the like). Maybe it doesn't usually, though.

Here is a related program where "the most competetive candidates" get 152/151. http://soils.ifas.ufl.edu/academics/application.shtml

Here, "successful applicants usually score above the 70th percentile." http://nres.illinois.edu/graduate/future/apply

Here at UC Santa Cruz a few years ago, the average scores in the old system were 635/659, which is like 151 quant and 162 verbal (see https://books.google.com/books?id=cBcmUFb2QX8C&pg=PA303&lpg=PA303&dq=agroecology+graduate+program+require+gre+scores&source=bl&ots=OcQCCWZQKC&sig=gULb0mPP1lDUltvfXl_vb2ANZ24&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CEgQ6AEwBmoVChMIp4-C7KGQxwIVjZaICh28swyS#v=onepage&q=agroecology%20graduate%20program%20require%20gre%20scores&f=false and http://gre.graduateshotline.com/gre_score_scale.html#.VcEgmzJyMQU ).

That last book gives the same information for a ton of other programs, too. You might want to buy it. Most of the ones I'm seeing in it look like you're probably fine.

Good luck!

Incidentally, in case it wasn't clear, I wrote the opening paragraphs before doing my Google searching, and given the results of that search, I would reconsider my advice to retake.

Don't feel old, semck. I wrote it on the old scores, too, and I'm young enough to be the youngest guy in many PhD cohorts still.

Haha yeah it's really the letters of rec I'm more worried about than anything else... I didn't study this is in undergrad, so I'm a bit nervous about what I'll be able to drum up.

Letters of Rec
Publications
Research Experience
Fruit experience
GPA/GRE

FTFY

Of course, one last thing that should be said is that you need to compare the quality/competetiveness of the programs you're interested in with the programs that I linked above.

Here is Berkeley's, for example, which I would *guess* is probably a well-regarded program: http://ourenvironment.berkeley.edu/graduate-programs/faq/#25

Average GPA and GRE scores vary slightly each year but are approximately as follows:

GPA: 3.5 – 3.7
GRE
Verbal: 158 – 164
Quantitative: 151 – 159
Analytical: 4.8 – 5.4

All the people at these universities I talked to seemed to think that doing an undergrad in liberal arts instead of a directly related field was not unprecedented and wasn't a problem for my application. Which makes me wonder what those kids did for their letters or rec. Idk

Thucy, I will write you a letter of recommendation. I'm intimately familiar of your experiences dealing with fruit, both as a farm hand and as a mod.

But you only got a 154 verbal. I don't trust your letter