Average Harvard GRE scores

GRE scores for Harvard MS in Engineering, Computer Science, Architecture etc

Harvard is the dream destination for a majority of applicants. This elite university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts is among the top in the Ivy League. It is the oldest, highly prestigious and most-sought after schools and has around 6,700 undergrad students and 14,500 graduate students. The library at Harvard has the largest academic collection.

The graduate schools include among others the Harvard graduate school of arts and science, engineering and applied sciences, education, law, design, medical school, school of dental medicine, public health and Harvard Kennedy School.

What is a good GRE score to get into Harvard?

Though a good GRE score would improve your chances of getting into Harvard, a great score in the GRE is not all that matters as this is just one aspect of your application and you’d be evaluated on the basis of other parameters and components of the application like the SOP (Statement of Purpose), letters of recommendation as well as your academic grades, any work experience in the relevant field, any previous research – related work evidence. Each department would look for different merits or qualifications in the candidate, so the selection criteria and process would vary.

The process of selection may seem random as a lot of deserving candidates are often rejected owing to capacity restraints and the large number of highly qualified applicant pool.

Getting into an extremely competitive university like Harvard can be really tough with acceptance rates in some of the graduate programs as low as 3%.

So, what are the average GRE scores for Harvard?

The average verbal and quantitative scores vary across the different fields. Fields like education sees the verbal average in the 91^st percentile and quantitative average in the 71^st percentile while analytical writing average is 5.0 for the PhD candidates. For Master of Education, the verbal average is in the 81^st percentile and the quantitative average is in the 61^st percentile while analytical writing average is 4.6. (Source: gsas.harvard.edu)

On the other hand, the engineering field sees a very high average quantitative score of 167 whereas the average verbal score tends to be slightly lower at 160. At the Harvard John A. Paulson School of engineering and applied sciences, across all the master’s and PhD programs, the average GRE quantitative scores were in the range of 90^th – 95^th percentile whereas the average verbal GRE scores were in the range of 75^th– 80^th percentiles. (source: seas.harvard.edu)

The average GRE scores for the graduate school of design (architecture) were 157 for the verbal, 159 for the quantitative, and 4.0 for the analytical writing sections. (source: gsd.harvard.edu)

Within any university, the average GRE scores tend to vary depending upon the program you apply to. This is evident from the table below which shows the average Harvard GRE scores for various disciplines.

Department	Average Verbal	Average Quantitative
Engineering	160	167
Computer Science	155	161
Psychology	163	154
Physics	167	167
Chemistry	164	163
Mathematics	165	167
Education	160	156
Architecture / Design	157	159

Table source: US News, Magoosh

You need to do your research about the GRE scores for a particular university or program and set your score target accordingly. Again, make sure that you’re able to spend enough time on the other components of your application as well.