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[openminded]

Hello,

I have a 3.7 GPA Overall in my masters, 3.85 in my major in Civil Engineering and got a 700 Quantitative on the GRE (155 on the new system) and a 500 on the Verbal (153 in the new system).  I applied to a PhD program in Civil Engineering.

I applied to a top 10 school.  Are these scores to low to get admitted to a Top 10 school ? 

How important is the GRE ? Is it used to make funding decisions ? admission decisions ?

Please provide frank and brutal advice.

Thank you.

[totoro]

They would likely have been too low to get into the PhD program I ran at a 100th ranked economics department in the US. 500 was the cut-off the university set for the verbal. For a native speaker it's really bad. We had so many people with 800 quant scores, that 700 was pretty low.

[scampster]

It sounds like the OP isn't a native speaker, but I may be wrong. My anecdotal evidence from being in a top ten engineering program is that there were students with GRE scores similar to that in the program. So they got in, but I am sure they had great credentials otherwise.

Low GRE scores may make you ineligible for university fellowships, but in engineering much of student funding comes from individual advisors, who may or may not care about GRE scores.

You did contact faculty in all the departments you applied to, right?

[betterslac]

Hello,

I have a 3.7 GPA Overall in my masters, 3.85 in my major in Civil Engineering and got a 700 Quantitative on the GRE (155 on the new system) and a 500 on the Verbal (153 in the new system).  I applied to a PhD program in Civil Engineering.

I applied to a top 10 school.  Are these scores to low to get admitted to a Top 10 school ? 

How important is the GRE ? Is it used to make funding decisions ? admission decisions ?

Please provide frank and brutal advice.

Thank you.

I CLEPPED out of my college math courses and so never took any as an undergraduate, and got a 650 on the quantitative part of the GRE back in the 80s. I would think anyone who has to take the math that engineers do (both of my brothers are EE's) should be able to get at least a 750 with one eye closed and a massive hangover. Is it more difficult now? It used to be high school math with an occasional calculus problem thrown in for fun.

If you are not a native speaker, then a 500 on the verbal is ok. If you are a native speaker, well, 500 is pretty brutal for any discipline.

[openminded]

Scampster: Thank you.

I did speak to some of the faculty, and yes I am an international student.

This low score might cause me to not have funding, but I guess we'll see.

For example, Purdue University (didn't apply there), ranked 3rd in Civil Engineering by US News and World Report, sets 700Q and 500V at the minimum (says so on their website).

So, at least I have that going for me.

[sciencegrad]

Hello,

I have a 3.7 GPA Overall in my masters, 3.85 in my major in Civil Engineering and got a 700 Quantitative on the GRE (155 on the new system) and a 500 on the Verbal (153 in the new system).  I applied to a PhD program in Civil Engineering.

I applied to a top 10 school.  Are these scores to low to get admitted to a Top 10 school ? 

How important is the GRE ? Is it used to make funding decisions ? admission decisions ?

Please provide frank and brutal advice.

Thank you.

I CLEPPED out of my college math courses and so never took any as an undergraduate, and got a 650 on the quantitative part of the GRE back in the 80s. I would think anyone who has to take the math that engineers do (both of my brothers are EE's) should be able to get at least a 750 with one eye closed and a massive hangover. Is it more difficult now? It used to be high school math with an occasional calculus problem thrown in for fun.

If you are not a native speaker, then a 500 on the verbal is ok. If you are a native speaker, well, 500 is pretty brutal for any discipline.

I had a math-intensive undergrad and didn't score a 750 Q on the GRE.  I also didn't study at all, though, and didn't know what to expect.  As it turned out, the vast majority of the questions I had dealt with techniques that I had grown very rusty on since I left high school.

[chaosbydesign]

All I'm going to say is that my quant score was lower than yours (not by an insignificant amount, either) and my verbal was higher; I got into grad school (STEM field), and I got full funding. It depends on the university and the rest of your application.

[jungle_jane]

I'm tt faculty in engineering at an R1- my GRE scores (from the early 2000s) were:
Quantative:780
Analytical: 780
Verbal: 470. yep. me fail english.

And I'm a native English speaker (the woman at the testing center - I was among the first to take it on computer - gave me an odd look until she saw engineering, then said "ohhhh"). At least back when I applied, schools only looked at the analytical and quantitative, so it was almost a matter of pride in my cohort as to who had the lowest verbal score. (Stupid analogies! I'm not good with symbolism either, sigh.)

These days, it is my opinion that the GRE is almost pointless for engineering grad school. They took away one of the sections we relied on and replaced it with something subjective. I've suggested to our grad committee that we consider looking at FE (formerly EIT) scores instead......

[totoro]

You must practice for the GRE. It's silly not to and miss out on funding opportunities as a result. Everyone in China takes courses to do the test. That's how most of the Chinese candidates I saw had 800 Q or close to it. I practiced with a book with sample questions back in the 80s myself. I got a university fellowship my first year as a result.

We didn't look at the analytical writing section much unless it was really bad. We would like economists to be able to reason verbally and write well as well as do math.

[openminded]

That is especially true for me since I am an international student.  It will be harder for me to be considered for funding.  Isn't funding allocated first to domestic students ?

[totoro]

That is especially true for me since I am an international student.  It will be harder for me to be considered for funding.  Isn't funding allocated first to domestic students ?

That depends entirely on the school or department. We didn't have a bias but we were often skeptical about the credentials of students from some countries (especially China). At my alma mater they tried to get a reasonable mix of Americans and foreigners. I'm an oddity. A non-American native English speaker...

[openminded]

I am not familiar with the decision making for funding.  Does it depend on the department ? Are funds allocated first for domestic students ? Or for international students ?  Does funding go to the best candidate, similar to a job at an organization ?

Thank you.

[scampster]

I am not familiar with the decision making for funding.  Does it depend on the department ? Are funds allocated first for domestic students ? Or for international students ?  Does funding go to the best candidate, similar to a job at an organization ?

In my experience in engineering departments, there are three kinds of funding.

One are department or university fellowships. Usually these are not restricted to American students, but are often used as recruiting fellowships. Most engineering schools have issues recruiting American students, not foreign students. None of the foreign students at my top ranked engineering school had these, but I had one, and I was by no means objectively better than them. American students who can get these are often competitive for the national government fellowships which means they can fund themselves down the line.

Two are TAships. Sometimes these belong to the professors teaching the class, sometimes they belong to the department. So each school will be different.

Three are the RA positions, where your advisor will be funding you on a project. This is where making that connection with a potential advisor in the fall is key. Then you know if they have funding and might be interested in funding you.

So to answer your questions, there wasn't any order for funding where I went. For RAs, the profs want the best student for the job, which means they might not care at all about your GREs or even your GPA, but rather your previous research experience. The best candidate is subjective.

[hopefully]

I had similar scores to you, and got a 5.5 on the analytical writing which was very high.

Would that help at all ?

[openminded]

I also got a 5.5 on the analytical portion of the test.