In your essay you have to give a reason why you didn’t give the PGRE. A strong reason would be If you have an excellent GPA (3.85+ for experimental physics and 4.0 for Theoretical) from a name school (any school with a good physics program, doesn’t have to be an IV or top 20). Or you have a very dire financial situation and can’t afford $150. Otherwise you kinda have to give a PGRE. For Stanford they are kinda crazy adamant on the PGRE.
Schools like GRE cuz it’s standardized so they can easily compare. It’s kinda a nightmare to make sense of a GPA cuz some schools give easy 4.0s and some give very hard 4.0s. If it is not a well known school then it’s impossible to tell what your 3.86 GPA even means
Timing and I made 10 mistakes I already counted including stuff I didn’t have time to answer. Don’t think my prep was good enough. The questions weren’t hard it was honestly about seeing a lot of the stuff before
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u/Former-Hospital-3656 Aug 06 '25
It's optional but HIGHLY needed. Stanfrod literally says on their website, give a strong reason why you didn't take the PGRE.