When to Take the GRE for CRNA School (Check This First)

Updated September 2026

The short answer on when to take the GRE for CRNA school: sit it at least 3 to 4 months before your earliest deadline, so a retake still fits. But check first. In our database of 154 accredited programs, 109 don't require the GRE at all.

Wait, do you even need to take the GRE for CRNA school?

So I want you to do something before you spend one dollar on a prep book. Pull up your actual list. Not the imaginary list, the real one. And if you don't have one yet, go build it in our free school database and come back.

And here is what our database of 154 accredited programs says. 109 of them don't require the GRE. 40 do. And 5 don't publish a policy either way, which means you're calling them. So before you block off four months of your life, you need to know which bucket your programs are sitting in.

But I'm not saying the GRE is pointless. For the 40 programs that want it, it's a real gate and you have to clear it. I am just saying that a whole lot of nurses study for a test that three of their five schools stopped asking for a while ago. And that sucks. That's four months you could have spent on your science GPA or getting shadow hours.

We have a whole separate post on which programs require the GRE, and a running list of CRNA programs with no GRE required. Go look. I'll wait.

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So when to take the GRE for CRNA school, actually?

Okay, so you looked, and at least one program on your list wants a score. Now we can talk about timing.

My rule of thumb is 3 to 4 months before your earliest deadline. Not your average deadline. Not the one you are most excited about. The earliest one. And that's the date that governs everything else you do this year.

Why that far out? Three reasons, and I'm going to count them.

Number one, official score reports take weeks to reach programs. You see an unofficial number at the test center, sure, but the thing the admissions office needs shows up later. Number two, you want the score in your hand before you finalize your list. A score changes which programs are realistic, and it's a lot easier to add a school than to unsend an application. And number three, retakes. If the number comes back under what a program wants, you need runway to sit it again, and you cannot manufacture runway in October.

So just to recap the three things. Reports are slow, the score shapes your list, and a retake needs room. 3 to 4 months buys you all of that. Right?

How long should you study for the GRE while working full time?

So this is the part where someone always wants me to hand them a magic number of hours a day. I don't have one and anyone who gives you one is guessing about your brain.

What I can tell you is what I see. Most nurses working full time plan on 2 to 3 months of studying. That's an observation, not a rule, and your mileage is going to vary based on how long it has been since you did math on purpose. If you have been out of school a hot minute, give yourself the longer end.

And the piece people underestimate isn't the content. It's the schedule. You're working three twelves. You are not studying on a shift day, or if you are, you're studying badly at 10pm with your eyes crossing. So your real study week is maybe four usable days, and that math is what stretches 2 months into 4 when you plan it on paper without looking at your schedule.

I'm not saying you need to become a monk about it. Just count your actual free days before you pick a test date, not your calendar days.

What GRE score do CRNA programs want?

Alright, real numbers, because I hate when people say "a competitive score" and walk away. I hate it.

Of the 40 programs in our database that require the GRE, 29 publish a target score. The common shape looks like this.

But take that with a grain of salt as a planning target, not as a promise. Those are the common shapes across the programs that publish something, and a specific school can want something completely different. It's your responsibility to reach out to the program and find out these answers yourself. Email them and ask. They answer, I promise, and they would rather answer in April than read a bad application in October.

And the other 11 of those 40? They require it but do not publish a target. Which is its own kind of annoying, but it also means you're aiming for "solid" rather than a cutoff.

Can you get the GRE waived for CRNA school?

Yes, sometimes, and this is the part almost nobody checks.

Of the 40 programs that require the GRE, 12 will waive it. The two most common triggers are a GPA above a threshold, and we see thresholds like 3.3, 3.5, and 3.6, or holding the CCRN. That's it. That's the whole thing standing between some of you and four months of vocabulary flashcards.

Go check your GPA against those numbers. If you're sitting at a 3.6 and you were about to buy a prep course, stop and read the waiver language on every one of your 40-bucket programs first. And if you are close but not over, that's another argument for the science GPA work we always talk about, which lives over in our CRNA requirements breakdown.

I'm not telling you the waiver is guaranteed. Waiver language is fussy and programs change it. Confirm it with the program in writing before you cancel a test date, okay?

What if you already took the GRE a few years ago?

Good news for once. So, GRE scores are valid for 5 years. So if you sat it during your BSN, or during some other career detour you were briefly considering, that score may still be live.

Pull the date. And if it expires before your earliest deadline, you're retaking it, and now you know your timeline. If it is still valid and it clears the targets your programs publish, congratulations, you just got four months of your life back. Go spend them on shadow hours.

But the trap here's assuming the number you got at 22 is the number you'd get now. Maybe. Maybe not. If it was borderline and a program on your list is competitive, a retake with the 3 to 4 month rule still applies.

Our Final Thoughts

Listen. The GRE is one piece of the puzzle, and for most of you it's not even on the board. Check your list first, then work backward 3 to 4 months from your earliest deadline, then study. In that order. The nurses who struggle with this are almost never the ones who studied wrong. They're the ones who found out in September that they needed a score at all.