Here’s how you can send in your GRE score to your prospective graduate schools, with the steps and costs involved.
Now that you’ve done well on the GRE, the next step is to officially submit your score to the application boards of all the graduate schools you’re planning to apply to. Your terrific GRE performance won’t do you much good if you forget to do this.
To make sure you do this right, consult our guide on how to send your GRE score properly.
What we will cover?
Your Scores
The GRE General Test can give you 3 scores.
- Verbal Reasoning score, ranging from 130 to 170 points in 1-point increments
- Quantitative Reasoning score, also ranging from 130 to 170 points in 1-point increments
- Analytical Writing score, ranging from 0 to 6, in half-point increments
Computer-Delivered Scores
Did you take the computer-delivered GRE test?
- When you’re done with the test, you’ll be asked whether you want the report and know your score, or you want to Cancel.
- Pick the “Report” option and you get your unofficial scores for verbal and quant. You won’t be able to get your essay scores at that point.
- If you pick “Cancel”, then it’s like the test never happened. Even if you don’t feel confident about how well you did, you won’t know for sure exactly what score you got for that particular test. Besides, picking “Report” only gives you your score—it doesn’t force you at this point to send them in.
- You’ll then be asked to send your scores to a maximum of 4 recipients. This is when you decide whether you want your scores sent in. The cost of this service for up to 4 recipients is already covered by your standard test administration fee you paid ($205 in most places).
- You should be able to find the school in the search menu, If for some reason, you can’t find the school, you can talk to the test administrator. They will then give you a form to fill up with the school’s information before you leave the test center.
Score Select Tool
When you’ve picked your score recipients, you now have the option of choosing the scores you want to send.
- Pick “All”, and the score recipients get all the GRE scores you’ve received in the last 5 years. These include the scores for the test you’ve just finished that day.
- Pick “Most Recent”, and the school recipients only receive the test scores you got for that day’s test.
- Keep in mind that your “All” or “Most Recent” choice will apply to all the recipients. That is, School #1 cannot get all the scores from the last 5 years, while School #2 only gets the most recent scores.
- Also, you can’t pick just the Quant score from a previous test and the Verbal score from the most recent test. This rule applies to both computer-delivered and paper-delivered tests.
Official Scores
You’ll get your official GRE scores about 10 to 15 days after taking the test. You’ll get an email about this from the ETS. You then have to log in to your ETS account to see your score. Your Verbal and Quant scores are now official, plus you’re able to see your scores for the Analytical Writing section. You also get to see your percentile performance.
The official scores you get will contain:
- Your contact info (your name, phone number, and email address)
- Your date of birth
- Your gender
- The test date or dates
- The authorized score recipients
- Your scores for each section
- Your percentile performance (that is, how well you did, compared to the other test-takers)
- Your planned graduate major
- The other scores for the last 5 years
Once the official scores are available, ETSA also sends in these official scores to your designated recipients. The recipients will see:
- Your contact info (your name, phone number, and email address)
- Your scores for each section
- Your percentile performance (that is, how well you did, compared to the other test-takers)
- Your planned graduate major
Keep in mind that each recipient school won’t know which other schools received your GRE test scores. For all they know, they’re the only school that received your GRE scores.
Also, if you picked the “Most Recent” scores option to send in, the recipients won’t even know that you’ve taken the GRE previously. However, some schools may require their applicants to report all their GRE test scores, if they have taken the GRE previously
Paper-Delivered
If you’ve taken the paper-delivered version of the GRE, you can still send in the official scores to up to 4 recipients without paying extra. But the procedure here will be a bit different.
- First of all, you have to choose your 4 recipients when you first register for the GRE. So do your research on the potential graduate schools early.
- Since you choose the 4 recipients on the GRE registration day, you will have to commit on sending in these scores to the recipients without knowing first whether you did well or not. So, you better be really confident about doing well on the GRE. If you bomb the test, you won’t be able to prevent these schools from seeing your abysmal scores.
- You’ll also want to make sure that you’re able to get the testing day, time, and location that suit you best. Keep in mind that some days of the week are more popular for taking these tests. Sometimes the testing location can fill up quickly.
- It will take up to 5 weeks for the ETS to release your paper-delivered GRE scores. Again, by that time you’ll get a notification email and you can see your scores once you log in to your ETS account. Like with the computer-delivered version, your recipients also get your scores, percentiles, and planned graduate major.
It’s quite apparent that you’ll find the computer-delivered version a lot more convenient. You’re able to pick the recipients later, and you receive your scores sooner.
Additional Score Reports
If you plan on sending your scores to more than 4 recipients, you then have to pay an extra $27 for each recipient of the additional score report (ASR).
You’ll also pay this fee if you don’t pick the 4 recipients of the GRE scores on the test day. So instead of paying nothing to send in the scores to the 4 recipients, you’ll have to pay $108.
Here’s how you can do this:
- Log in to your ETS home page.
- Click the Scores
- Under that heading, find and click the “Send Additional Score Reports” option.
- After clicking this, you’ll get the option of updating your personal information (in case you’ve changed your address).
- Then you can look up the other recipients, by the name or code of the school.
Score Select for ASR
Once again, you’ll be able to use the Score Select tool. But this time, you have an extra option.
- You can opt for “Most Recent” option and send in the scores from just the most recent test day.
- With the “All” option, you can send in all the GRE test scores you’ve achieved over the last 5 years.
- But now you can also pick the “Any” option. This time, you can pick any test score or as many as you want over the last 5 years. That is, you can pick to send in your latest scores and the scores from 5 years ago, and not the scores from 2 years ago.
- Again, the recipients won’t know that you took extra GRE tests, if you don’t send those scores in. And yet again, keep in mind that some schools require you to send in all your GRE scores from the last 5 years.
- Your requests will take 5 business days to process before the ETS automatically sends the scores to your picked recipients.
- You may also wish to order your ASRs via mail (or even fax). This is possible, but this time it may take up to 10 business days to process your ASR requests. You still have to pay the extra $27 per recipient.
Scoring Services Costs
Here are the costs for various scoring services:
- Viewing your scores online. Free (covered by the $205 registration fee).
- Printing the official examinee score report online.
- Additional score reports. $27 per recipient.
- Question-and-Answer review service. This is for the Verbal Reasoning and Quantitative Reasoning sections. This service is only available for the residents of New York state, and it costs $50.
- Score Review for Analytical Writing measure. $60.
- Score reinstatement fee. You’re able to reinstate your scores if you chose the “Cancel” option on the test day. But you can only do this within 60 days of your test date. It will cost you $50, and you’ll then be able to see the scores on your ETS account.
It’s true that the fees can add up, especially for ASRs. But then again, all these expenses are worth paying, once you get into your preferred graduate school!
