Casper14

Hi all How did you go about choosing the programs that you would like to attend, while simultaneously remaining realistic as to your chances of admission? I have heard that most programs consider the GRE only as part of your application and thus as more of a cutoff than a deciding factor. I wrote the GRE today, and my (unofficial) scores were 160 for verbal and 162 for quantitative. This is slightly lower than I was hoping for, but I do not think I can really complain, as I only studied for one week. My problem is that every application is costing me a considerable amount of money (and paying in USD with ZAR can really hurt your pocket!). Also, if I do not get funding through a TA or RA position, it will be very unlikely that I can attend. Therefore I would like to choose a relatively small amount of programs to apply to while also maximising my chance of funding at those universities. My top choices of programs to attend are currently Computer Engineering at UC Berkeley, UT Austin, UW Seattle and UC San Diego. So my question is, should I lower my sights in order to raise my chance of funding? Is it even easier to get funding at lower-ranked universities? Thanks for any insight!

I would like to add onto this question, as I have a similar one and do not want to start a new topic just for it. How do you actually send the scores? Do you enter the codes when you report them, and does this mean I need to learn them all? (As you are not allowed to bring paper into the exam room?)

You are right, the questions on Kaplan are considerably easier than the real GRE ones. On the official GRE site, you can get this guide to the paper-based one, but the questions are similar so worth doing. http://www.ets.org/s/gre/pdf/practice_book_GRE_pb_revised_general_test.pdf Also, you can head over to http://magoosh.com/gre/. The people at Magoosh seem to be quite aware of the level of questions on the actual GRE, or at least that's what I found. They also present some strategies and explanations on some very tricky questions, which is nice. Apart from those, a quick Google search delivers quite a few free resources, just sift through them to find difficult questions. But without a doubt, the PowerPrep is the closest you can get to the real thing!

Hey Starscream, as far as I know the deadlines are only around December 15 for international students, so I don't think you have to worry about that. I am an international student myself, applying for MS/PhD Electrical Engineering, Fall 2013. As for the TOEFL, if you are fluent in English you should have no problems with it. My English is fluent, and I didn't do any studying for the TOEFL at all, but still scored 117/120. Some universities state that you need more than ~26 for the Speaking Section in order to be considered for a Teaching Assistantship. The people above mentioning the importance of a nice and early start on the SOP are absolutely correct. I plan on starting mine as soon as I have my GRE scores, so that I may have a better idea of which universities are realistic goals for me. Be sure to write your SOP specific to each university and program, as I have heard that having a generic SOP can severely damage your case. Have you taken the GRE? I suppose that would be the most important thing to get done straight away. I am writing on Wednesday, and even though I have a strong mathematical background, but I am still pretty nervous.

Yeah, pemdas I agree with you that it's best to treat all sections as equal. I just have a few more questions. If someone with some experience in graduate admissions for computer engineering (or general) could please enlighten me. What would be a good GRE score to 1) get admission and 2) get some form of funding or assistantship? Please also mention the university that you are using as reference. (By that I mean a competitive university will surely require higher scores than a less-competitive one) Lastly, will being a student from outside the USA affect my applications in any way? I scored well on the TOEFL, so no worries there, but would they be eager to have a foreign student or would they rather be apprehensive at my academic abilities? Thanks for all the help I have received here everyone, I really appreciate it. It's not easy finding these things out living outside the USA.

Thanks everyone, I only needed a rough estimate of my score. So as I understand, to get a decent score for a section I can't really afford to get more than 3 or 4 questions from roughly 40 wrong? (165+) My problem is that I also need to do well enough to secure funding, being an international student. I read somewhere that the order of questions isn't fixed and that your next section is determined from your performance on the previous section. Does this mean anything useful? I mean, does it mean that if your maths section is followed by a verbal section that you messed up the maths or anything like that?

Thanks! So that means I got 158 for Verbal and 161 for Quantitative, right? I will probably have to pick those scores up though. I will look at some of those sites, ideally I just want to do a bunch of old tests to get into the swing of things. I am comfortable with the level of work, I just get thrown off by misinterpreting some questions though...

Hi everybody I just did a GRE practice test, the one located here: http://www.ets.org/s/gre/pdf/practice_book_GRE_pb_revised_general_test.pdf I completed the Verbal and Quantitative sections of this practice test, but I must admit that I am at a loss to understand how the scoring works. Each section consists of 25 questions, and my respective scores were: Verbal: 16/25 and 19/25 Quantitative: 21/25 and 18/25 I read that the scoring system scales your scores to a value between 130 and 170, based on small variations in the difficulty of the test. How can I adjust my scores to find (roughly) some idea of where I will lie on the 130-170 scale? Also, if anyone knows of any other preparation materials that I should look at, please mention them! I understand that the test has recently changed, so I am not sure which tests I should do. I am writing the real test a week from today, so the more practice I can get in the better! Thanks for any help! Casper