What is a good GRE Score?
A common query that arises in most of the Graduate Record Examinations candidates is, “What is a fine GRE mark?” Will my marks be enough to secure me a seat in my dream college? Well, the answer lies in the question itself. Different colleges have different cut-offs and requirements. So, what you consider as a good GRE score might not be the same for a particular institute! Every college has specific admission criteria. To be more precise, each department within a college might’ve different score requisites.
Besides GRE preparation and a good GRE score form only half of the MS/MBA abroad preparation process. A good GRE score helps you clear the necessary cutoff and even can be a good mitigator for previous academic scores. However, to gain admission to your dream college you need to focus on other aspects of the admission process too.
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How to find out the essential GRE score requirement for a university?
The best thing to do is to visit their site. Their website will show the admission criteria including the Graduate Record Examinations benchmark score. The quants & verbal section are separately viewed thus making the departments have a varied idea of a good Graduate Record Examinations score. Major of the top colleges are pretty obvious regarding their requirements. They state minimal marks for a section as well as the overall to get a seat into their institute.
The bottom line is that you need to understand the needs of your ideal college before concluding a good score/ bad score. Here are a few examples that will give you an idea about the scores different universities are looking at:
| University | Verbal avg. marks | Quant marks | Quant avg. marks |
| Purdue University | 158 | 160 | 163 |
| Michigan Ann Arbor | 154 | 159 | 161 |
| Georgia Technological | 155 | 159 | 161 |
| Illinois Urbana | 155 | 159 | 163 |
| University of California | 155 | 159 | 161 |
| Stanford University | 158 | 160 | 163 |
| Massachusetts Institute of technology | 157 | 160 | 162 |
| Cornell University | 160 | 159 | 162 |
| University of Texas Austin | 155 | 157 | 160 |
| Carnegie Mellon University | 159 | 159 | 161 |
In general, the benchmarks for different sections in GRE are as follows:
1. Great Marks: Getting 163 + in verbal, 165 + in quantitative & an overall of 328 plus will make you among 10% of GRE toppers. You need to also have 5.0+ in AWA.
2. Good Marks: Getting 158 to 162 in verbal, 159 to 164 in quantitative & an overall of 317- 327 will make you among 25% of scorers. You need to also get 4.5 in AWA.
3. Modest marks: Getting 152 to 157 in verbal & 153 to 158 in quantitative & an overall of 305 & 316 will make you amongst 50% of the scorers. You need to also get a 4.0+ in AWA.
