clandry

Out of curiosity, typically I separate the last line of a paragraph and the heading with one space, like so: end of sentence. Heading On the application I changed that space to 0.5 (half as much as the above). That's okay right?

I'm sorry this happened! It's very unethical (intentional or not) for her to have done this. Unfortunately, I really doubt NSF will bend the rules. They'll probably just use the "well, we gave you 5 slots, so you should've had some back-ups" excuse. What she said doesn't make much sense. "did not know of extension" seems very awkward. Is she saying that she missed the first deadline so she thought it'd be pointless to submit and apparently did not know of an extension. That doesn't explain how she missed all your emails or how she emails you 18minutes after the deadline. Sounds real sketchy to me. Idk if you should email her. I act on impulse, which is pretty bad, so I would've emailed her an angry, but professional email. Anyways, I should've probably asked this earlier, but does the ranking system for letter of recs have any impact? If you have more than 3 letters, then I know they'll read the top 3, but what if you only have 3? How would they look at the rankings? I hope that doesn't mean they're only gonna read #1. I guess I just don't get the point of it for people with 3 LORs.

I would email your prospective school and ask for their opinion. I have certainly seen students get declined solely because of their GRE scores. This is largely dependent on the school, so you should check instead of relying on a generalization (not much of a generalization).

Seriously?

Im not sure how familiar you are with CFD, but do you know if your friends do more of the applications side of CFD or the fundamentals (e.g., code development for higher order solvers)?

MIT and Cornell do for sure. I suspect Caltech may as well. For the other schools, you probably want to be above a 4.

Some schools have hard set deadlines for ALL supporting documents while others state supporting documents can arrive in a "reasonable" time period after the deadline.

Are you even allowed to advertise on these boards?.... Any class for the AWA is a waste of money. There's very simple general guidelines to follow to get a 5+.

Got it on the 6th/7th day.

The ranking thing is a little flawed. If you could join a group that is full of exceptional students, then it may fail you. And why's this post in the GRE section?

ah yes! I forgot that. A generic format works quite well. For the argument essay, I always have this as my thesis: "although the argument is seemingly plausible, it is rife with unwarranted assumptions."

That and they made me turn my pockets inside out, take my shoes and socks off. I was starting to get pissed after awhile.

Not for comp based. In fact it's considered a violation. Those guys check you harder than the airport dudes. Not even kidding

Interesting, I've never heard of this fellowship. What are the primary points of emphasis for this fellowship? The computational sciences is broad, so I am unsure what it is they may be looking for. My specific interest is in Computational Fluid Dynamics, particularly in the domain of turbulence modeling. If you're awarded the fellowship, are you constrained to doing computational research only?

That's an auto rejection without a doubt. Do not message them since they may not notice it.

Literally was trying to kill that bug in your sig that I thought was on my screen.

I was going to say it may be OKAY, but the over the page limit is definitely an auto-denial as it is viewed as unfair advantage. Sorry to be the bearer of bad news.

I took my first attempt at the GRE last Monday and received a 168Q/164V/5.5AWA. I feel my advice on Q&V would not be anything insightful, but I have some strategies for the AWA that I think would benefit most people if you're not aware of them already. Here they are: 1) If you can't come up with examples, just BS. Make crap up. That's what I did. Personal BS anecdotes, supposedly "famous quotes" by people (hell, make up the person's name too), supposed historical events that never happened, and so on.... Unless you got some moral objections with using this method, I'd seriously suggest giving this strategy a go as it worked for me. However, it's probably not a good idea to BS common knowledge. For example, you don't want to say something like the "U.S. joined the Nazis during WWII." Be crafty with the BSing. 2) Use several GRE words you feel comfortable using. 3) Write long essays as many have suggested. 4) Don't stop writing to look for that perfect word. On more important writing (e.g., writing journal papers, statements of purpose), I have the perfect word syndrome. You absolutely cannot do this on the GRE as it will drain your time dramatically. 5) Seriously, just use the format of intro, body, conclusion. Don't try to be creative unless you're comfortable doing so. 6) Use first, second, last to start body paragraphs if you can't think of anything else. Don't spend too much time on this. Forget wtf your creative writing or w/e teachers have taught you as it is irrelevant to the GRE. Note: The above were things I made sure to employ, although I am not sure which contributed the most, if at all, to my score. Both of my essays were close to 1000 words (I had a ballpark idea of what 500, 750, 1000 word essays are) for what it's worth. If it was a formal essay where I had unlimited time, I could probably cut the word count in half easily. In other words, I had a bunch of sentences that could have been worded in a much more concise manner and quite pathetically, i think the redundancy may have improved my score. In conclusion, the GRE test sucks and the graders are idiots.

No it's rounded up to the nearest HALF point.

But seriously, that's ridiculous. I don't even get how the reason has to do with the claim. The claim is saying we can't use the past for contemporary decision-making, but their justification is saying that we can't correlate the current and past until after some unspecified time. How does the reason have anything to do with decision-making tho? It seems the reason is just saying we can't connect the present and past presently, so to speak, as we do not have sufficient time to judge, but it seems completely irrelevant to decision making. Thanks for the explanation by the way. I sincerely hope I do not receive this prompt.

Claim: Knowing about the past cannot help people to make important decisions today. Reason: We are not able to make connections between current events and past events until we have some distance from both. I am confused about the reason stated. I have no idea what they mean by "until we have some distance from both." I'm assuming both means 'present' and 'past,' but how can be have distance from the present? I'm so confused. They're basically stating that the past will not help in making decisions today because connections cannot be made between current and past events unless we have some distance from both.

So it seems that the minimum font for citations is 10. Is it necessary to have each citation start on a new line? That'd waste so much space if so.

Is it bad to hardwire your proposal to a particular university?

What are your guys' thoughts on not picking a side? That is, I provide support for both disagreeing and agreeing with the issue? Many times, I struggle to come up with 3 STRONG examples for ONE side. Typically, I can come up with two just fine and either come up with a weak 3rd or not be able to come up with one at all. I can also come up with two strong examples for the opposing side. If I could do something like 2 Agree and 2 Disagree examples, then I'd have a much easier time writing the essays. Would this be frowned upon? I am also aware that AWA graders are appreciative of nuance, but what I am proposing (agreeing&disagreeing) isn't really nuance (addressing examples that could challenge your position). From the former half of the instructions (agree/disagree with claim), it doesn't seem to give you room to stay in the middle; however, I've seen a couple of essays from the ETS Prep that chose to agree&disagree. These essays are received high marks (5+). I remembering writing agree/disagree essays in the past (not on the GRE), where if you did not choose a side, it usually negatively impacted your score.