The GRE in general is not very important. I went to one of the schools on your list and I knew people in my class who scored MUCH, MUCH lower than your scores (hundreds of points lower).
The only way that GRE scores are really in any way an important deciding factor is if your GPA is very low (around 3.0 or below), in which case the test scores may be looked at as some indication of whether you're up to the academic work.
In the case of a typical applicant the portfolio is by far the most important thing (imagine that it is at least 40% of the decision), with recommendations next (say 30%), then statement of purpose (maybe 25%), and GRE and GPA combined making up the other 5%.
One other thing to consider: the schools will see all of your GRE scores. So if you retake it you're not cancelling out the old scores - they'll be reported along with the new. Some schools consider only the highest, but others average them or show both in the file that goes to the admissions committee.

ive heard 80th percentile being thrown around as the score you want to shoot for when applying to ivies. GRE scores are also used for scholarship consideration, so keep that in mind.

nevethreless, if i were applying (thank goodness i don't have to go through that again), i would be cool with 78th. your time and money are better spent on your portfolio at this pont.

thanks for the responses.

yeah, i was a bit concerned that they'll see both scores, so why will they care if my verbal bumps up from 580 to 670 if they can see the 580? also, there's sure no guarantee about being able to bump it up to 670 or even half that much improvement...

also, i have little time to do any more gre studying, i have to do my portfolio like serious. then again, if my portfolio ends up being not so hot, then i guess a bad gre could push me into the reject pile.

scholarships would be very good, but at the moment the most important thing is getting into the school. i can deal with debt as long as i get the education.

i really appreciate the responses. any other thoughts from people who have been through this recently or sit on admission committees?

I agree with dot that your time and money are better spent on your portfolio at this point. The GRE's are only one of many considerations for admission. Focus on the portfolio and let your work say it all.

i recall that the average princeton accepted arch student gre score was well below you're scores-no worries. i commiserate though, i just scored a 580 verbal too and it was nicely below my practic test scores. it sucks, but...not enough to retake the thing. we move on...

So... everyone says to focus on your portfolio... as a business undergrad, that's pretty scary. (not that I am a quant jock or anything).

Any thoughts on what they want to see? There is plenty of student work on-line, and I'm assuming they want to see that you would fit into/be able to keep up with/exceed that level of work. Some of the stuff is pretty crazy... Columbia's digital grotesque/biological stuff for example.

Any thoughts would be appreciated..

FYI my portfolio is made up of photographs + 7 hand-drawn sets of plans/elevations + theory explainations.

Considering taking a year to work on it...

the subjectivity of it all............!

is average verbal score at Princeton really below 580?
just curious...


well, that's a relief

conormac,
Concerning the portfolio, I would disagree...i just went to a few of open houses...and have been asking this question too...you know everyone takes a certain amount, no matter what, of those with non Architectural backgrounds...granted...you still have to be pretty mazing...but its crap shoot....just show them the stuff you are good at...don;t worry about looking like you are as sophisticated as the 3rd year people..they know you haven't taken Alonso yet...just be amazing at something. I too lament over the consequences of it all, but whatever...if I don;t get in ...I'll just retool on my own for the next year...( learn Maya script or something)...until next year rolls around......the good thing about all this is..it teaches you about you really need to improve...which most may not get , by not trying to do sommething as difficult as getting into an ivy.

p.s. I bombed the GRE 650 q , 450 v...defintely taken that thing over....

Form-
thanks for the thoughts, it's easy to get neurotic about this stuff...
"...just be amazing at something." lol... I'll try!

RE: GRE's, as I said in annother thread, they are a good test of how well you have been coached on obscure formulaic word problems & vocab lists... I think admissions officers know that. I got similar scores on my diagnostic for the Kaplan course and I gained over 200 points on the final thing. no joke.

GRE
guilt, regret, embarrassment...

Do many graduate programs require GREs? The M.Arch program I got accepted to only required them if your undergrad GPA was less than 3.0, so I never took them.

all the ones I have looked at have required them... they'll let you know on their admissions pages.

talk about a pause in conversation.

one word:



P O R T F O L I O

this is my GRE recommendation. i studied for 4 days straight for the GRE and got a 1350. since a lot of it is memorization (and re-studying long-forgotten middle school math) it pays to memorize all the formulas and words close enough to the test day that you can still remember them. i was very pleased with my score considering how little i studied. so i recommend studying in a quick burst, and taking it.

And yes, of course, the portfolio is a lot more important. but i got the GRE out of the way quickly and efficiently.

my impression is that a good GRE score wont necessarily help you, but a bad one will certainly flag you in the admissions process. so you DON'T need a great score (1400+), you just need one that is good enough that it isnt a strike against you (probably 1200+)

my friend got a 940 and got in to UPenn..

for MArch's, the GRE doesn't matter and it is a waste of time and thought.

update: two of my friends + myslef got into u penn with < 1000 gre scores

I've even heard that you can get total garbage GRE scores and still get admitted into those programs provided your portfolio is outstanding and your GPA is a little less than stellar (or even stellar).

I got into one of them, and my GRE scores were nothing to brag about trust me.

Harvard rejected me with a 1490 GRE (and 3.85 gpa.) I didn't waste much time studying for it--just study enough to familiarize yourself with what test questions you'll be seeing.

It's all about where you fit in based on your portfolio and personal statement. Hopefully people next year will see this thread and conclude that GRE is negligible and won't post another GRE thread.

(Ah neat, but of course they will...)

GRE 1130
GPA 3.6

I don't think it matters as has been said already...portfolio x 3.

yeah they will. I'm convinced that the personal statement can actually even trump portfolio in some cases. If your wants, needs, and interests line up perfectly with a school's strengths, that's really the perfect match. Unless your portfolio looks like a 10 year old made it or something, that match is hard to ignore.

I actually did pay a 10 year old to make it, I hope that doesn't narrow my chances... it's tough with him cramming for the GRE at the same time

el Dude is right. GPA and GRE are BS. Portfolio is the only important thing. (broken record time). I think the personal statement is important too, but not nearly as. When the apps roll into my former school, only the portfolios that are circulated to the ruling parties.

A friend of mine got in to Princeton MArchI with a GPA around 3.0 and a not-so-great verbal score on GRE. And I am sure there were plenty of people denied the same year with much higher points and what not. Her portfolio and work the in the portfolio were splendiferous.

Do you ever make a post, and then go back and read it and totally not recognize yourself in it? Yeah, that was one of those. I must have been having a bad day when I wrote that.

Ooops. And I was a little late myself...

still relevant. Although I have read about nineteen thousand people say that portfolio is all that matters, I still only beleive it 80%.

I hope we all are splendiferous enough.

is this portfolio based on any one of our academic projects or we have to design and prepare a separate portfolio just for this purpose?

This post is ANCIENT.

For good schools, though secondary or tertiary to the portfolio, a 600 for both V and M should be a baseline.  The other thing is that the same score, say 700, is way different in percentiles for V and M, with the scores in M bunching up much closer to 800.  That's because the engineers and scientists do that to the curve of the M scores.  That the OP got a 740 in math and is complaining is laughable.  It's more than anyone will ever need for architecture.  As for the OP's verbal, I'm surprised than an Ivy undergrad produced a 580.  That should have been a 600+ with that pedigree.

Yeah, so, to anyone who asks this question, if they want to feel comfortable about their GRE scores, a 600+ on each is decent for a-school, if accompanied by a good portfolio, good grades, and an essay that charms them.