Advice: Take GRE Again for Third Time or No?
I’m looking for some advice on whether I should retake the GRE one more time or be done with it.
For context, I’m applying mainly to M7 MBA programs this fall, ideally Round 1 in early September. I’m also considering law school/JD-MBA programs, likely applying to law schools a little later, around October. I am a white male in the USA working in M&A for a tech company. Did a rotational program for two years and I’ve been placed in this M&A role for about a year now. I graduated from Ohio State in 2023 with a 3.90 GPA, majoring in finance.
My goal going into this whole process was around a 330+, ideally 332–335 if possible. I know that may sound like splitting hairs, but for the schools I’m targeting, I wanted the GRE to really be a strength. I did not take college applications seriously enough after high school, and I’ll be damned if I make that mistake again. I want the best possible GRE score that is realistic.
Official GRE attempts:
Attempt 1 on June 5: 167Q/162V/5.5AWA
Verbal Misses on Attempt 1: 2RC/2TC/3SE
Attempt 2 on June 28: 165Q/162V/??AWA
Some background on my prep:
I studied pretty seriously for this. I have been grinding since February. My baseline was a 156Q/155V, but that was on Manhattan Prep. Since then, I have studied 2-4 hours on average six days per week. I learned roughly 1,700 GRE vocab words across different lists/apps, did ETS material (verbal reasoning book in full, quant book in full), GregMat verbal/RC work (1 month plan in full), quant and verbal review with GregMat tutors, four official practice tests (scores ranging widely, highest 331 on PPP1), error logs, etc.
On my first official test, I got the 329. I was happy with the quant score, but I honestly thought verbal could have been better. I got frustrated after realizing I made a quant mistake, and I think that threw off my focus on verbal RC. So after the first test, my thinking was: if I can keep quant around 166–167 and get verbal up even a couple points, I could realistically get 331–333. That’s why I retook.
But yesterday’s second attempt did not go that way. Verbal stayed exactly the same at 162. It was much harder than last time, despite me putting 90% of my effort over the last few weeks into verbal. Especially SE. I knew the words but seemingly every problem, there were three options that were so similar I couldn’t easily narrow to two.
It was discouraging. Quant dropped to 165. To be fair, the quant also felt noticeably harder this time, so I’m not totally shocked it dropped, but it’s still frustrating.
So now I’m trying to decide what to do.
Part of me thinks I should stop because:
I already have a 329 with 167Q. For M7 MBA apps, that’s probably good enough, but I am not certain. I’m applying Round 1 in September, so essays/resume/recommendations/school research are becoming more important as the time crunch gets worse.
I still believe my ceiling is higher than 329.
My first attempt had a few things go wrong mentally, and the second attempt felt like a much tougher form. A 331–333 would obviously feel better for top MBA/JD-MBA/law school applications, but that could be unrealistic.
To be honest, my entire issue is SE/TC. My RC has always been very strong. But the similarity between words in answer choices continues to bite me no matter how hard I try to stick to the GregMat strategies and no matter how many GregMat tutoring sessions I have.
For anyone who has been in a similar position or who has strong thoughts: would you retake again, or would you stop and focus fully on applications? Thanks so much!