JohnBom

It's not probing. Just a question. Congrats on that stellar transcript of yours and the top five school. No need to get defensive. I was interested in knowing how you managed to work 60 hours while going to class and doing your assignments. You clearly seem to be very proud of it, so why would it be surprising that I am asking about the details? I never had to do that and never met anyone who did. We also all had to live on campus far from any town or city, so maybe that's why nobody did. I think the point of a discussion board is sharing experiences and learning from one another. That's what I am trying to do. Yes, I went to school in the States. 8-5 because I did not count TAing or tutoring as a job. We didn't get paid for it. It was a service for a credit or two. Also, labs take up a bunch of time. Usually one science course would have at least one full afternoon lab a week. Some of them have two labs a week. Many science kids end up spending most of their afternoons in the lab. Most art classes require a lab too. And think of having to take physical ed. at eight in the morning.. Come on, guys, I am not trying to piss anyone off. I am just curious. I don't think more/less structured in class time makes for better education. We clearly all have different experiences. There is nothing wrong with discussing the details of how people overcame challenges. I have a 60 hour job right now. I get up at six to be there at eight. Work till nine. Get home at ten. I would not be able to take a single class, unless it was on the weekend.

I just want you to explain to me when you worked those sixty hours if you were in class whole day every day?

I had a part-time job throughout college, but definitely couldn't do anything more. I slept four or five hours in order to be able to handle that. Also, there are of course no breaks when you are working. Working 60 hours? I don't get that..It makes me wonder where you went to school. We had classes from eight to five every day, plus nonsense arts and sports requirements. Did you go to work after dinner and stayed there till two in the morning in order to work sixty hours a week? I am just really surprised that is possible.

SFSU Dumont?

This is interesting. I kept on scoring insanely low on the princeton review practice tests. (I mean insanely low, like in 400s.) Then took the powerprep test and did very well. In 700s. My actual GRE result was much more similar to powerprep.

Great! Congrats!

Hi Lise, I am an international student as well. I spent a lot of time worrying about the gre's. I am still trying to figure out how they are going to factor in to my application. While I was initially quite bitter about the non-native speaker disadvantage, especially in the verbal section, I have come to rationalize it. I believe that it is not unreasonable of a university to expect their international students to get a score quite as good as the domestic students. After all, being a doctoral student in the US, you will mainly compete with domestic students. Especially in your discipline it is essential to prove that you are equally comfortable with English as your native speaking classmates. Looking at the scores and the schools you have listed, I think most of them would expect at least 600V from their ph.d applicants. Harvard probably 700. That said, there are ways you can compensate for your average scores by making other parts of your application stand out.

The same here. I ended up ordering them the old-fashioned way.

I agree with poster above. I would retake it. Not because of the quantitative, which seems to matter little in English, but for the verbal. I think it is expected that you get closer to 700V as a prospective professor of English. If you want to boost your quantitative score quickly, I would recommend taking a course. The instructors can show you simple tricks that make your score jump.

I just read the article you posted. I really enjoyed it. It's making me wonder where is the line between impressing someone appropriately and inappropriately. Overall, I very much agree with you on the sop changes. According to the outline, this could turn out to be ten pages long and you really only want about three good ones.

I am having similar thoughts about my CV. Some schools ask for it and some don't. I am thinking I might send it as well. I think that it can't work against me. I don't know about writing sample. I would ask for a permission, as fuzzy here already suggested because it is probably much longer than my cv

I know this is going to sound absurd, but I haven't thought of that at all until you mentioned it. Thanks. I will talk to the students.

I think the whole concept of having a safety school is very problematic when applied to grad programs. In my opinion, there is no reason why anyone needs to be desperate to enroll into a doctoral program. If it doesn't work this year with any of your top choices, it might work next time.

I am planning on applying to programs in medical sociology. Coming back to writing samples - I have discussed it with some of my friends who are already in doctoral programs and got two very different responses about what makes an appropriate writing sample. Response A: "It's really your chance that you are familiar with the literature of your subfield, and that should be your focus." Response B: "They just want to know that you can write and think at the same time." Would you go with A or B?

I found number2.com very helpful.

I approached a number of professors about their take on the value of the GRE's recently. One of them is from UPenn. He said "You just need to prove you are not a trained monkey." I guess it really depends on what he considers a trained monkey capable of doing.. 90 percentile is pretty harsh, especially considering how quantitative certain departments are. Naturally, I never sat on any admission committee. In my opinion, V620 is a great result for an international student.

I am trying to make it 10. Yes, I am worried about not being accepted, but I also hold a full time job, and I would like to make each sop as personalized as possible.

Hi All- I thought it might be nice to get some person-to-person feedback. Perhaps we can talk a little about pain and suffering. Here is a link to my new meet-up group. Hope to see you soon! http://www.meetup.com/Grad-School-App-Support-Group/

Hi All- I thought it might be nice to get some person-to-person feedback. Perhaps we can talk a little about pain and suffering. Here is a link to my new meet-up group. Hope to see you soon! http://www.meetup.com/Grad-School-App-Support-Group/

I believe that even if you are not applying to ivies anything less than V600 is quite low. However, I am not sure whether you have enough time to re-take and actually improve substantially. The 5 on writing also won't help you much. How did you prepare for the test this time around? Every school has a different system for choosing the score that they ultimately consider. Calling each one of them is probably your best option.

Hope you don't mind me asking- where did you hear that?

Good evening everybody! I was wondering if anyone likes using the GRE bible. I am confused especially by the vocab section. I think it contains a number of errors. Did anybody else have that impression?

The same goes for UCLA. http://www.soc.ucla.edu/graduate-study/faq

I don't really understand why you are talking about re-taking the test. If you are targeting the top five to ten schools (whatever that means), re-taking it is not going to help you. It is my understanding that the best programs take your score as more of an entry ticket to the application process. In other words, 800 and 800 is not going to get you accepted. And would you really want to go to a program that is going to consider the gres very important? I belive It doesn't stand for much once you have made it round two. In addition to that, most of the professors I have consulted suggest that using student's gre score is especially problematic with international students because they typically score extremely high, but their impressive scores are often a result of many years of memorization and is not supported by language skills.

I spent hours on hours pondering the hasts or no hasts dilemma. And just as I was leaning towards just sticking with straight up sociology and getting a certificate in sts on the way to my phd, I got an invitation for a prospective student visit. Anybody else thinking about attending the visiting day? Is a visit going to increase my chances? I'd have to fly. Also, i am not really sure I want to miss a day of work.