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In any event, let's keep this discussion board free of pedantic remarks. thanks.

Well NPRjunkie what was it that indicated otherwise?

MPPgal, noted your advice viz. quant background and score. Taking this into consideration, it would seem Georgetown is a real stretch for me. I might drop it all together and focus on Washington University Evans. Besides the US application system is so lengthy and time-consuming, i'd rather focus on colleges where i do stand a realistic chance. Also - I am originally from India but did all my schooling in Singapore. I guess my competition will be kids from here and elsewhere in SEA. Thank god I am not competing with the Indian students!

Hello! I actually found Manhattan prep to be pretty good in the verbal aspect because of the number/range of difficulty of questions they have. For each section, the 5 lb book has 100+ questions so you get tons of practice. Lots of obscure words also come up in the text completions/sentence equivalence, so you can make note of them for test day. On my first attempt, I saw lots of words that I have never come across before (and I am a lawyer!), rest assured that Manhattan's book helped me sail through the second round. Rest of it is luck, and what comes up on test day ! Wish you all the best !

Scarf in the wind, thank you very much for your invaluable suggestions. Based on your recommendations, I tried out Manhattan GRE, and my scores improved dramatically today. Dear all, I would highly recommend Manhattan's 5 lb book of problems. What was good about the book was the number of questions, and explanations for each question. Its almost like you don't need to be tutored for this exam ! After a 3-week gap between the two exams, my second score came up to 164/170 (verbal) and 156/170 (math). My first score was really shite (152 Math and 156 Verbal) - and I was using Princeton Review !! Their practice tests are too easy !

Schools applying to: Tufts Fletcher Georgetown MSFS University of Washington - Evans Possibly GWU Elliott GPA: Studied Law in King's College London. Graduated with a 2:1 honours. I don't expect my GPA to be more than 3.1/3.2 GRE Score: 1st Attempt: 152 Quant, 156 Verbal (waiting for the AW scores) Planning for a second attempt. Work experience: slightly less than 2 years in a law firm in Singapore. Also spent a year in India after graduating and worked for a think-tank for about 3 months. Apart from that, have interned for an NGO working towards the abolition of child labour in rural India. I would say nothing substantive apart from a few months' internships in the non-profit sector in India. Language skills Native speaker of Hindi Intermediate knowledge of French. Am working on this right now, to get it upto par with grad school requirements. Quantitative requirements: Really none, apart from High School Maths and high school macro/microecons. That was almost 7 years back though ! Overseas experience (work, study and teaching): I have interned at a think-tank in New Delhi as well as rural areas in central India. In total I have spent about 5 months doing so. Not sure if that's good enough. Statement of Purpose: Should be alright, as I am quite good at writing ! Recommendations: One is a Human Rights Law professor, one is a Rhodes Scholar, and one was a lecturer in my college.

Thanks so much for your tips ! Since your suggestion, I have got Manhattan's 5 lb book of practice problems, and started with that. I spaced my 2nd test about 3 weeks apart. Didn't want to drag it for the simple reason that there is absolutely no end to studying for these standardized tests. Let's see what happens with the 2nd GRE !

I am so sad right now :( I was consistently scoring 161 Verbal and 154 Quant on the princeton review tests (which I took untimed, btw). Today I just sat for the GRE and i completely bombed the Verbal section with a 156 (70th percentile) ! And my quant was 152, which is 49th percentile !! I am planning to apply to the Fletcher and Georgetown MSFS schools. I am so worried about these scores ! How can I better prepare myself next time? Are there any books which are better than Princeton Review? For the record, I studied for about a month (2 hours everyday) for the GRE....thats almost 40-50 hours prep right there.