elenlin

My advice is to be really careful on the first four to five questions. Those are really the ones that are going to determine whether you get above 750 or below. Also to be lucky.

I disagree. It is my belief that Kaplan and Princeton Review purposely score their practice tests low (especially diagnostic tests) so that you are excited by your real score and attribute your improvement to their help. I consistently scored about 100 points higher on the PowerPrep than on the Princeton Review practice and my final score was 150 points higher. I found similar patterns in high school when studying for the SATs. The only reason that you would do worse on the real thing (IMO) is if you have trouble dealing with test-taking stress.

Hi. I'm another person who used to live in Miami, but not for grad school, so I don't really know the situation on where to get housing. My one piece of advice is this: You NEED a car. With air conditioning. Public transportation in Miami is a joke, and it's far far far too hot for half the year, so walking is very difficult. Miami was also built in an era of cars, thus things are very spread out. Unless you are a super hard-core cyclist, there's no way of doing Miami without an automobile. Ok two pieces of advice - Sun Juice Smoothies in South Miami is quite close to campus and delicious - kind of like Jamba Juice but much better. It's also the kind of thing that makes you feel good about going to school in an (almost) tropical paradise. Seriously, while working out the expenses is probably not fun, once you get there Miami is a really fun place to live.

Here: http://www.gsas.harvard.edu/current_stu ... cation.php they have info about the housing lottery. It says that for non-GSAS students they determine order of preference by how far away their current address is from campus, but it doesn't say how many people are on that list. Also, hi! I'm starting a PhD in historical musicology in the fall. I can't wait for August.

I agree that practice books really did it for me - at least one hour a day for a month with the Princeton Review and the Kaplan Math and Verbal books (I especially liked the Kaplan). As a supplement to studying verbal, I also suggest reading some Michael Chabon novels. I happened to be reading Kavalier and Clay while I was studying and noticed that, in addition to being a really excellent novel, it has about one or two GRE words on every page. Reading it really helped reinforce the vocabulary I learned.