10: Your GRE, Transcript, and Fee Waiver Questions Answered

Dra. Yvette Martínez-Vu

Hello, everyone. I'm a little late on recording my next episode because I recently had to undergo a surgery and I'm still technically in recovery. So if I sound a little bit fuzzy or a little bit nasally, it's because of a nose surgery that I'm recovering from. But I did want to still record a short episode on some questions that have come up, that have risen recently with my students who are seniors right now and applying to graduate school. And so this episode is going to be dedicated to talking about some technical details that you need to know about when applying to graduate school. And I'm also just going to focus on three things. One is just questions that come up related to the GRE exam and sending your GRE scores. The next, it will be questions surrounding your transcripts: when to send them, how to send them, what type of transcripts to send. And then the last part will be focused on fee waivers. These are all just questions that have come up for me recently with our seniors who have had December 1st, December 15th, and now their next round is making their end of December and early, like New Year deadlines.

Dra. Yvette Martínez-Vu

So for the first part is GRE scores. One question that has come up with GRE scores is: let's say I took the GRE more than once and I had a higher verbal score on one exam. And then I had a higher quantitative score on the other exam. Which one should I send? Technically, I say if you can, in that situation, you should send both because what most schools will likely do is they'll take the highest score from each of the sections. They'll take the higher verbal score from one and the higher quant from the other. If you can't afford to send both, or if you would rather than just send one score, I would recommend: send the score that has the higher section that means more in your field. So for instance, if you're in a STEM field, send the score with a higher quant score. You know, if you're in a Humanities or Social Science, send the one with a higher verbal score, higher written score.

Dra. Yvette Martínez-Vu

The other question that I have had come up with regard to GRE scores is: well, I'm applying to more than one program from the same school, do I need to send my GRE scores more than once? I'm thinking here of one student, in particular, who was applying to three different programs, I believe at UC San Diego. I told him make sure to send it once. It'll most likely go towards their graduate division. From there, just check up on them. Make sure that they receive the scores and that they're going to send it to the appropriate departments that you're applying to. So no, you don't have to spend three times the amount to send the scores three times to the same school. You send it once if you're applying to multiple programs in one school.

Dra. Yvette Martínez-Vu

The other question has to do with: what if it's optional for me to send the GRE scores? What do I do then? And most of the time, when something is optional, I recommend that you do it unless you think it's going to hurt you. So if it's optional, and you completely bombed the GRE score, you don't have to send it. In that case, you know, I would be completely comfortable telling someone not to send it. But if you did okay, if you were, you know, average or above average, go ahead and send it. It's not going to hurt you. It can only help you.

Dra. Yvette Martínez-Vu

The other question that has come up is, let me think about it. Oh, you know, it is expensive to send your GRE scores. And so if you're not quite at the stage where you're applying to graduate school and you're thinking about taking the GRE score, you should start thinking very seriously about your graduate school list. Because one thing that students often don't take advantage of enough, even though we remind them about this in our McNair program. I remind my students this too who I work with, within and outside McNair, is that when you take the GRE score, you are going to be presented with an opportunity to send GRE scores to, I don't remember how many, but a number of schools for free on the day that you take the test. And so you want to take advantage of those free GRE scores that you can send. Even though you're not allowed to bring anything on the day of the exam, you want to have memorized a solid number, I would say four to eight schools, that you're seriously interested in applying to. So that way, when you send them the scores, that opportunity isn't lost. That way, you're not wasting an opportunity. So definitely take advantage of that. I think that's everything I want to say with regard to GRE scores.

Dra. Yvette Martínez-Vu

Now I want to move on to transcripts. The first thing I want to remind you to do if you're applying to graduate school, or planning to apply to graduate school within the next year, was to take a look at the schools on your list and find out if they're asking for official or unofficial scores. If they don't say anything, they just say send your -oh sorry, not official or unofficial scores, I mean, official or unofficial transcripts. I'm still obviously a little fuzzy from my pain meds. Hopefully I'm making some sense right now. But again, so if they're asking for official versus unofficial transcripts. If they don't say anything, if it just says please send your transcripts. For us, that means unofficial, unless they actually use the words: please send your official transcripts. Then you actually have to order them from the bursar's or the registrar's office, whichever office has them and mail it to them. Or you could also mail it to yourself, send it to yourself, scan them and upload them to the application portal. But please take a look at that because there's no point in sending official scores to every school and wasting that money. I know at our university, it costs sixteen dollars each time you send a transcript. And it's really hard, especially for those of our students who are transfer students, they're low income transfer students. They're having to order transcripts from multiple community colleges and then order transcripts from, you know, the UC that they're currently at. That all adds up. You know, it's it's like three schools sixteen dollars each, times the number of schools they're applying to, it could easily be hundreds of dollars that you're spending. So again, if they don't ask for official, send the unofficial ones and that will be completely fine. Most of the time, they ask for unofficial anyway. If you're admitted, they will then ask you to send official scores after the fact. They'll definitely let you know if you need official scores afterwards.

Dra. Yvette Martínez-Vu

The other thing about sending transcripts, and I guess this applies to the GRE scores and also to fee waivers, is make sure that you're ordering these things early. And by early, I mean at least two weeks in advance of the deadline. Why do I say this? I say this because we're just a few weeks shy of the December 30th, New Year's like deadlines. The January 1st, December 30th deadlines. And around that time is when most people are on winter break. A lot of offices close, including ours, the week of Christmas and the week of New Year's. You don't want to be trying to order transcripts, and then you don't hear from anybody because they're on winter break. That's why it's really important that you order them early. That way if there are any glitches, issues, technical things that need to be resolved, you can actually get a hold of someone and have them help you because they're actually working during that time. This is the week before Christmas, then we're going into that week. This is the time, if you waited this long to order your transcripts, to send your GRE scores, and to work on your fee waivers for the end of December, early January deadlines.

Dra. Yvette Martínez-Vu

I think that's all I want to cover about transcripts. Definitely take a look at whether or not they're official versus unofficial, what they're asking for. And also if they're official, do they actually need you to mail it into them? Or can you actually just order one set of official transcripts that you send to yourself and you can scan it. Some of them will allow you to just scan an official one. You can use the same scan one for every school so you only pay once for an official transcript. Versus some schools may say: we need a signed, sealed official transcript that you mail to them. In that case, you're having to pay individually for each one you mail. Again, I'm trying to save you some money. I'm trying to also save you some work. That's why it's important to track all of these things.

Dra. Yvette Martínez-Vu

Okay, so when it comes to fee waivers, the same applies. Every school has a very different policy with regard to how they handle fee waivers. Some schools are amazing, like they will just give you a code if you show them proof that you are low income, or that you're part of a program like McNair or the Mellon Mays fellowship, they'll give you a code you inserted in your application, you're good to go. Very easy. Some of them you know, we'll have you email a verification form that proves again that your low income or part of one of these programs. Then they'll, you know, process it for you. It could take anywhere from five to ten business days. Some of them are an actual separate application in addition to doing your PhD or Masters application. They require you to submit a fee waiver application that's a separate process. There are even some schools that don't let you get to the fee waiver page until after you've completed every single section of your application, which is incredibly frustrating. Some of our students, what they've had to do is literally fill in each box of their application with nonsense, just so that they can get to the last page and save it, and then access the fee waiver process. The fee waiver process will open you up to a separate page where it gives you instructions on what you need to do to get a fee waiver.

Dra. Yvette Martínez-Vu

I believe this year, UC Irvine required students to submit their application at least five business days in advance for them to get their fee waiver process. And in one case, one student submitted it, I believe, six business days in advance, and he still didn't get a fee waiver process. He had to pay out of pocket. That's over $100 that you're paying out of pocket per school, which is a lot of money. I don't recommend that. And you know, some schools, I think in the past it was Stanford, I can't remember some other programs, they'll take as long as two weeks to get back to you with letting you know whether or not you received a fee waiver. So I just want to stress this: as much as possible, try to get your applications in early. I would say two weeks in advance. The same goes for not just your applications, but the fee waiver process. Try to get on top of that early. I think that what I'm going to do next year with my students is include it as part of their curriculum, and have deadlines where they're all required to look into this process and to apply for at least one fee waiver and to submit at least one transcript, at least one set of GRE scores, you know, two to four weeks before their first deadline. If you don't look this up in advance, it ends up costing you a lot more money. And I know that if you're like me and you're low income and first gen, it's really hard and it becomes another hurdle, another thing that gets in your way of applying to the top programs in your school. That's all I want to say for today. I'm still feeling a little fuzzy, a little in pain, but I also wanted to get some information out there in hopes that it'll help you out. Let me know if you have any questions and I'll definitely see you next time. Thank you.