What is the best time to take the GRE?

What is the right time to take GRE for an Dual student?

• currently i am in 4th year some more related questions are 1. When should i apply for gre and when i will get a date? 2.After taking Gre what is the right time to start applying for universities? http://3.ToWhat are skills required to get an admission in an top universities? A lot's of thanks in advance for your kind help

• Answer:

  The best year to take GRE according to me should be the pre-final year of your course. This allows ample time for other stuff such as taking TOEFL (if you are from a country whose primary language is not english), getting transcripts, Resume, SOP, LOR and you get the idea. Applying to foreign universities is a long and grueling process and GRE is just the first step of this long process. If you take your GRE in the pre-final year of your course you can manage these steps in the final year. Also, most of the companies visit for campus placements in the final year and it gets really hectic managing studying for GRE and preparing for campus placements at the same time. Dates depend from center to center, you can check that on the ETS website by creating a free account. If you want to take your center in a metropolitan city, then you have to take your at least two months in advance as these centers get filled relatively quickly, especially in the months of Sep - Dec. Universities usually start accepting applications from early september or october for the Fall term of the next year. It depends on university to university though, you have to check on individual university's website. Admission to top universities like MIT, Harvard, Cornell, Princeton, Caltech, UC Berkeley etc requires a very strong overall profile. 330+ in the new GRE, 110+ in TOEFL iBT, Research projects/publications, work experience, good sports/extra-curricular activities, well versed SOP and LORs from professors/employers of leading institutes/organizations. The top universities are engaged in high-quality research, so you'll have to show research aptitude via publications and/or projects. For a CS student, contributing to open source projects also counts. PS :- As I'm an undergraduate engineering student in India, these answers are from an Indian undergraduate engineering student's perspective.