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I agree with dat_nerd that in many cases the CS GRE isn't that helpful anyways, unless your undergrad is in a different field (or perhaps a very unknown university). I don't think I've ever seen a single CS graduate programme that actually requires the test. If you really feel that you want to include a subject test, you could try taking it in a relevant neighbouring discipline, e.g. maths or physics, depending on your specialisation. As for why they are doing it, I assume it is really a question of how many people are taking the test. From what I've seen on their website, there's less then 1000 people for the CS GRE each year (far fewer than for any other subject test), and I think at such small numbers the results might become a bit inaccurate (a few percentiles up or down don't mean that much if a percentile is ten people). Also, would this thread perhaps fit better in the GRE or CS forums?

Hrm, I saw that someone posted an acceptance to Harvard's EconCS group a few days ago. That would have been one of my top choices :/ On the off chance that that person is reading this, would you mind sharing which group member contacted you? Just so I can get some idea of whether I might still have a slight chance, or if I'm definitely out. (If you don't want to post here feel free to PM me of course.)

I've applied to both. No communication from EECS yet, from ORC I received an email a few days ago saying that my application was now complete. I'm guessing that email arriving only now is just a matter of them having a massive backlog of applications to clear, to the best of my knowledge my application was complete in December. Have you heard anything yet?

I would think the answer is generally 'No', as department chair they'd be busy enough.

Quoting almost verbatim from what a faculty member at a top-20 school wrote to me on that topic: * 85th percentile is the lower threshold of what you should aim for. * Very high subject test scores can help your application, but weak ones don't necessarily count against you. So I wouldn't worry too much. It's not gonna help you, but it won't hurt you either. From what I've heard from a number of people, the top 4 schools generally don't care about your GRE to begin with.

If you're coming from a background in theoretical physics, then part III might actually be a good choice, as you're free to mix courses from pure maths and theoretical physics. There are no restrictions whatsoever as to how you can combine courses, so you get a lot of freedom to do whatever interests you most. Elaborating on what Statsfrommaths already said: Yes, part III is rather competitive if you want a distinction. The upshot is, if you're applying to North American universities for a PhD, then you would get your offers long before the exams, and really need not be overly concerned about your performance. Simply passing part III is fairly easy. Most exams are indeed of the regurgitating material from lectures variety, but it depends on the particular course. Admissions to part III is indeed not very competitive. My impression is that essentially the criteria are (i) are you likely able to pass the course and (ii) are you able to pay for it. (ii) is often a bigger problem than (i), especially if you're international. Oxford also has a one year masters on maths and theoretical computer science that I've heard very good things about, though that may not be exactly what you're looking for coming from physics. Imperial is also very good and has a course on 'quantum fields and fundamental forces' (or something like that) that looks very interesting, but of course that's theoretical physics not pure maths. They may have something in maths as well, don't know. Outside of those universities Warwick also has a very high reputation in maths, no idea if they have a masters though. Generally most Masters in England are only one year. Can't think of anything else in particular right now, but I'm sure there's many other interesting programmes around. By the way, I also know a few people who did the Masters in Paris (I'm guessing it's the same one that laplace mentioned, though I honestly don't know what university in particular they were based at), and they seemed quite happy with the programme.

I'm in the same situation for one of the schools I'm applying to (in all the other online application systems I can simply edit / delete the previous scores). I think I'll just email them explaining the situation and letting them know my new scores & registration number. Worst thing that can happen is that they don't change it I guess (but in my case the difference between the two scores is tiny anyway). On a related note, if I end up having both scores on my application, does anyone think that would make any particular impression on the admissions committee? (E.g. 'Oh wow, seems to be very committed to this', or 'Uh, doesn't appear very confident of their abilities') I can't imagine it would, but just wanting to make sure, maybe someone has heard otherwise.

It's happened to me as well, albeit on a subject test. I wouldn't be too fussed about it. There's only a finite number of questions, so they are bound to repeat occasionally.

Thanks everyone for your comments, I appreciate it. I've given it a lot of thought as well, and I now lean towards not going. Aside from the expense (and at second look, it would be considerable), the conference is in a slightly different field than what I am currently working on, so I'd risk being a bit out of place more than anything else I think. Plus, I really need a break...

That's a though one I think. On the one hand I'd say the percentile isn't quite as bad as it sounds - Since the test is generally not required, the group of people actually taking it is rather self-selected. Plus there is also almost no preparation material available, so studying for it is very difficult. But, on the other hand, there's no guarantee an admission committee would see it that way. Personally I'd try to find out what kind of scores the departments you're applying to usually get / admit into their programme. If 750 is close enough to the average of admitted students, submitting it probably won't hurt. If nothing is published on their website, try giving them a call, they might be willing to give you a rough indication of what kind of scores they are looking for.

Hrm, I think emailing them beforehand isn't so much of an option as the conference is after the respective application deadlines. If I've already applied (and hence made up my mind about their programme), what would be a valid reason to request a meeting with them? I think it might even come across as attention-whoring (which it is, of course...), wouldn't it? If anything, my angle would be to discuss something about their respective talks for instance, and then only casually mention that I've just submitted an application to their programme. Although that might be a bit transparent as well, I guess. Any thoughts on whether attending a conference per se would be viewed particularly favourable by admissions committees?

What TakeruK said, plus: Personally I'd maybe mention somewhere how you gained a background in these areas through other means. E.g. add an extra document in which you list textbooks, online courses, etc. in those areas that you have worked through in detail.

I'd interpret that wording to include things like practical labwork, even if it is supervised and following protocols. There's still a huge difference between reading about a procedure on a powerpoint slide, and actually performing it yourself. (NB, I'm not that familiar with lab techniques, but wouldn't one almost always be following a protocol anyways?) If unsure just make sure you are clear about the nature of your experience (i.e. mention specifically that you X in a lab practical under supervision), just to make sure you're not misrepresenting anything.

This is probably a stupid question, but still: Do any of you have any thoughts / experiences as to whether it makes a difference if one has met potential supervisors in person before, say at a conference? I've just seen that a conference in early January in the field I'm interested in is still accepting registrations, and there would be several faculty members of my top choice departments giving talks there. So I'm thinking about whether that alone would make it worth it going there (I'd likely have to pay for it myself, hence my hesitation). My gut feeling is that it can't hurt to say Hi and maybe mention that I'm applying to their programme, so at least they would know that my application is coming and could put a face to the name when they read it. On a related note, does simply attending a relevant conference/workshop count for anything? I've seen things like "attended ABCD '10" on people's CVs (without any talk / paper / poster), but it seems to me that just going there isn't much of an achievement.

I would tend to disagree with that. If accepted, you will be working fairly closely with the people reading your application for at least the next 4-5 years, so I think it can't hurt to give some indication that you're also a pleasant and sociable person they would actually want to be around. Briefly mentioning your hobbies can't hurt in that respect. Plus some of your hobbies can show positive attributes - e.g. persistence is surely a requirement for completing a PhD, so if you've, say, ran a marathon, I'd say in a way that's very relevant. With mentioning anything alcohol-related I'd be cautious though, that could obviously come across the wrong way. I also thought about putting my home-brewing on my CV, but ultimately decided against listing it just to be on the safe side.

Hi fdhkjal, many thanks for the advice, they're really good points. I do have one question: Most of the top-ranked CS programmes / departments share two common features I think. Firstly, they are generally quite large in size. Secondly, they all do committee-based admissions to the programme (rather than to specific areas / faculty members). For such programmes, how do you argue your fit to the department on your statement of purpose? Sure, I can write something along the lines of 'I'm interested in Stanford because Prof. X and Y are doing very interesting work on Z, which fits well with my background in this area.', but then so are Profs. A and B at Berkeley and C and D at MIT, and so on, so I feel that this isn't a convincing argument why I should be at Stanford specifically. Also, obviously a programme like Stanford has outstanding faculty in just about any area you can think of, so I'm not sure how much an argument as above would make me stand out from the crowd. At the other end of the spectrum, I could try to argue that I feel I fit very well with the programme overall due to the department's strength in several key areas that I might be interested in. But then this would essentially amount to not much more than 'I want to go to Stanford because it's Stanford', again not a very convincing argument. Any thoughts?

I've had a similar discussion with one of my recommenders once as well (also at a European university). What we ultimately thought was the best solution was to either not fill in anything or tick the highest possible value, and then explain in the actual letter that (i) my recommender didn't think comparisons on that high a level were meaningful (top 2, 5 or 10 percent would all be within 'measurement error' of each other), (ii) our education system gave no quantitative data on which to objectively answer such questions (e.g. the university doesn't collect any data about how one is ranked within their class / year), (iii) while they couldn't say if I was in the top 2, 5, or 10 percent, my recommender held my abilities in the highest regard possible. Not sure if this is the smartest way to go about it, but it was the most sensible thing we could think of.

Well, for what it's worth, the score itself is completely meaningless anyways. What you should look at is your percentile, and there what is considered 'good' depends greatly on where you are applying to

Neither It's out of 890.

26? Wow, that's certainly the most I've ever heard of. My impression is that 10-12 is usual (at least for maths / CS). It's a tricky question though, and it depends on the kind of places you're applying to. Especially for smaller programmes, and probably also for some of the very competitive ones, it's always a 'small numbers game', so even if you feel you're well qualified and a good fit there's always a chance you still won't get admitted. How far down you want to get that chance is up to you, I suppose, I don't know if there's a magic formula for how many programmes to apply to (though if somebody else could weigh in I'd appreciate it, still thinking about this issue myself). One thing to think about is that there's probably not much point in applying to a programme you know you definitely wouldn't feel excited about.

I'd be extremely cautious about using anything to do with your childhood in the SoP. The general consensus is this is not usually of any interest to the admissions committee. There may be exceptions of course, but from what you've written it sounds as though your first paragraph is really a generic story about how you got interested in the broad field - and that is almost certainly not required. Without having seen the actual text, my gut feeling would be to cut the first paragraph and start right with the particular topic you want to explore in your PhD. Explain what got you interested in that in particular. The more specific you can be the better.

Two things that immediately stood out: 1) When I was a child' - Delete that sentence, it's quite cliche, and simply not relevant. 2) 'I have developed very good independent learning and research skills' - Don't spell that out. If anything, imply it (e.g. talk in detail about a research project you did). Generally that whole paragraph seems a bit vague and could probably be left out entirely. I agree with TeaGirl that your second draft is much better. (Another thought: If they say 'at most 1000 words', they likely mean that as an upper limit. I don't think you'd go wrong submitting 500.) Other than that I think you're on the right track. Generally I'd say if anything focus more on research and less on 'soft' matters (e.g. last two paragraphs in your 1st draft).

Hi linaseta, I actually had to read your post a couple of times to understand what you are trying to get at. I'm 99% sure that the answer to your question is No!, don't under any circumstances answer a question incorrectly on purpose. I think you've misunderstood how the GRE adaptive testing works. As midnight streetlight pointed out, no one here truly knows the test algorithm. But: It most certainly does not simply give equal weight to each question. From the ETS website: Emphasis added. The key point is that the difficulty level of the section does factor into your score. I suspect that it works similarly to how they did it on the old GRE general, that is, your score on the first section puts you into a rough score band, and then the difficulty of the second section is chosen so as to allow the algorithm to refine your score within that score band. In other words, your performance on the first section is actually more important, as even acing the second section won't be able to make up for screwing up the first one (since all it will do is put you at the top of a very low score band). For the old GRE general, one of the most reiterated pieces of advice was to triple-check your answers to the first couple of questions on each section. It was almost impossible to make up for early mistakes later on, as your estimated score would already have dropped too much.

I think that's 'high nineties' for PhD applications even. I think it might in part depend on the rest of your application. E.g. if you are coming from a well-known (internationally / in the US - not just in your home country of course) university with a very good GPA, then GRE won't matter as much. I'm guessing if you did the subject test and scored very well there that would be more important than the general one as well. In any case I wouldn't be too concerned for places outside the top 3 or so, as research experience and letter of recommendation carry much more weight than GRE scores. But for e.g. Stanford it's likely that many applicants will have good research experience etc., so all else being equal GRE might play a (small) role. Two points to note: 1) MIT doesn't look at GRE scores. 2) If I recall correctly, Stanford says somewhere on their website that they require 113 TOEFL score. (I know, that's ridiculously high.)

I'm in a similar position and have a related question: How much difference does it make for admission purposes if a manuscript is 'in progress' or already submitted? I might be able to get one, possibly two submitted by the deadlines, but barely and only at the expense of working on my SoP etc., so I wonder if it'd be worth it? (Already posted this in the CS forum, but might actually fit better here anyways. - Sorry about the double post.)