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DrFaustus666

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Everything posted by DrFaustus666

  1. Thanks, it's by Picasso. I have a print of the same work on my wall. As to "not worth it," let me re-phrase: People on this forum have been accepted at Ivies with lower scores, and rejected from 2nd- and 3rd-tier schools with higher scores. It might have been a better use of my time to do more research, another conference or two, etc.
  2. Of course you're right. What's so confusing is how the same person's score can vary so much from one sitting of the test to another. I think these couple of data points may show a bigger picture: that this silly test, no matter how much some few of us obsess over it, is nothing more than a general indicator of our ability---and a highly flawed one at that.
  3. A quick update for my friends and anyone else interested. After almost two years of attempting to ace the GRE, I finally got a decent quantitative score, 770, up from a low of 640. Woo-hoo. It IS possible to significantly increase one's quantitative score, even for a liberal arts person. However, in the same sitting, I also got my worst-ever verbal score, 680. Not a bad score certainly, but I (once!) got an 800, and hoped to hold onto it. WRONG. Conclusion: it's not worth it. Yeah I know, many people realized that after one or two takings Cheers and good luck to all.
  4. There are many posts concerning the AW score. Almost everyone agrees that the AW score is not highly regarded by most universities. Or rather, the AW score carries much less weight than your "writing sample" and your Statement of Purpose. There are a few people who assert that the AW score is a good representation of your ability to write to a particular format, in a time-limited setting. But this begs the question of what is useful for a graduate student. Most of us almost never write about subjects with which we're not familiar and within a tight deadline (measured in minutes, not days!). True, we do have essay questions on exams, but we have plenty of time to prepare for the exam, and, if the grading is at all fair, our essays are judged by their content, not their correspondence with ETS's model of a "good" essay. Bottom line: you might re-take the GRE for the AW score, IF the universities you apply to have cutoffs. But I'd not worry too much about it, your other qualifications seem good, to me at least.
  5. I'm surprised nobody replied to your post . Judging from others' posts over the last couple of years, it seems that a 690 quantitative score will most likely not keep you out of most social science programs, provided the rest of your application is solid. Just at a guess, I would think that you'd need a very strong quantitative score (760+) only if your research plans included a lot of very heavy statistical analysis or computer modeling, etc. I would presume the opposite also to be true: if you want to use "softer" methods of research, then you would need only basic math competence, i.e., a score above about 600. Hope that helps.
  6. For what it's worth, I agree with this post 1000 times over. It's hard to say, and even harder to hear, but you must break out, by yourself and for yourself. And much better to do it while you're still young. As other posters have also said, some counseling will help you, and I strongly advise that too. The question of whether you earn an MFA or PhD, or five PhD's, is really irrelevant. You mother is running your life, and you must take charge of it and break free of her. Feel free to personal-message me if you'd like any further details, my own broad outlines are very, very similar though the details are totally different, in fact, opposite. Been there done that. You don't want to follow in my footsteps. Wishing you all the best! John
  7. congratulations!

  8. ask.com used to have some info about this, but as the other poster said, it's anybody's guess as to how reliable that might be.
  9. Hang in there.

  10. My take is, you should either (1) be a LOT more of a pest to the professor of the class --- FORCE him/her to find a grad student to help you, regardless of how much of a pain-in-the-butt you see yourself to be; or (2) withdraw from the class. Even a "C" in a graduate class, even if that class is not directly related to your major, is widely regarded as a failure. You may still complete your M.S. degree (assuming this is the only "C" on your transcript), but if you ever want to go for a Ph.D. in the same field, at the very least, you'll probably have some explaining to do. Also, don't let the other students' insouciant attitude throw you. It's YOUR degree, your career, not theirs.
  11. As a perennial non-quantitative person and student of the GRE, I have to chime in with my opinion that virtually ALL the quantitative questions are trick questions at some level. The tricks, especially in the first three or four questions, may seem trivial, or flamingly obvious to a Math-Hardscience-Engineering major; but those same tricks are anything but obvious to the rest of us who foolishly listened to our English professors who said, basically, "As long as you can balance your checkbook, you don't need to study mathematical or quantitative things again, just be sure to distinguish between a hermeneutical, text-immanent analysis and a post-structuralist, perpetually evolving text->context->text analysis". Not sure what my point is here ... oh yeah ... if you're baffled by the quantitative exam but basically remember your high school math, then remember that there's a twist to virtually every question. (I plan to take it one last time, in June, in hopes of smashing the 700-barrier.)
  12. I don't think you're a lunatic, and my own story is very similar--especially the part about grades (one prof loves you, the next doesn't). My only advice is, keep your focus. If you do as I did, and try to enter the mainstream of work (which I did, more or less successfully, for almost 30 years now), you may find yourself like me, in late-middle-age, and still dreaming. As to the GRE, it can be beaten, though it can take a lot of effort. (I did have the advantage of a relatively heavy high school math background, which still serves me well, 41 years after HS graduation.) Good luck!
  13. Right you are, newms. In addition, many of us on this forum who are, or have been, writers or editors, or teachers of writing or editing, are more than happy to read through SOPs too. --- though that absolutely does NOT mean that we ourselves write absolutely perfect papers all the time, as a good friend on this forum, who is not a native speaker of English(!!!)(ouch!!!), pointed out to me---If that person reads this, you know who you are :) :)
  14. Herzlichste Glückwünsche an alle! Prima!
  15. I don't give a rat's butt about most sports (though I do very occasionally see live tennis matches), I don't go to church unless it's a wedding, baptism, or bar/bat-mitzvah, been-there-done-that with diaperchanging, and, re Webern and Stockhausen, don't forget Carter, Boulez, and Penderecki. Which southeastern European language? (Albanian, Bulgarian, Croatian, Czech, Hungarian, Macedonian, Romanian, Serbian, Slovakian, Slovenian, etc. are not dirty words, even if the majority of Americans couldn't find Slovenia on the map if you offered a 50-dollar prize.)
  16. As a musician turned Germanist (who's on the fence about either musicology or German for the PhD), who also has a B.S. (equiv) and a 20+ year job in computer science , I'd definitely advise you against computer-junk unless you LOVE computers and math and related stuff---The field is currently being inundated by both "productivity enhancement" initiatives (which take all the FUN out of computer programming), and by immigrants who are willing to take jobs at far lower salaries and abominable working conditions, by US standards at any rate. Of course, this too may pass, but IMHO the MBA is a MUCH better, more robust, and more flexible option than CS if you just want a job and a (largeish) house in the suburbs, an SUV, and other trappings of upper-middle-class American life.
  17. I've done very extensive but informal research on this subject (the scoring algorithm of the computer adaptive test), using the two ETS-supplied Poweprep (OLD) tests, together with lists of the right and wrong answers. I've experimented, deliberately answering a question or two wrong, then answering every succeeding question right, just to see what happens. The short answer to all of this is: to get an 800 (or high 700s) on both Verbal and Quantitative, respectively, you must EITHER: (1) answer all of the first 20 questions correctly, then make no more than two or three mistakes in questions 21-end (30 or 28, respectively) OR (2) if you make even one mistake in the first eight questions or so, you must answer all succeeding questions correctly to score above about 720. Also, (1) answering all questions randomly yeilds a score in the low 300s at best (2) answering the first 15 or so questions correctly, plus totally random guesses for the remaining questions yeilds scores in the low 600 range (3) if you make more than one mistake in the first five questions, it is next-to-impossible to score above 750 All of this is with the OLD POWERPREP program, and of course, ETS has probably improved their scoring algorithm, such that it's not possible any longer to take tons of time on the first 15-20 questions, then rapid-fire guess at the rest. Hope this helps. John
  18. Till, I presume? Pleased to meet you!

  19. (Hopefully nobody on this forum is, or ends up being, a traveling clothware salesperson.) Tell the joke!
  20. Hindsight is always 20-20. We applicants (esp those of us who are non-traditional applicants, and/or those who have anything unusual in our backgrounds) will probably continue to worry until we're actually in the program of our choice. Not everyone has the maturity to realize from age 12 onwards that good grades and verifiable achievements DO matter. And that can put us in a real bind when we sooner or later realize that we want to do more with our lives than be some Kafkaesque bureaucrat in an obscure office, for an inane employer, who places us on trial but won't spell out the charges against us.
  21. Looking back at the thread, I can't believe I took Mr. Flame's attacks seriously. How dumb can I be?
  22. I don't have the huge dictionary, though I've found a number of the smaller books on various topics in used book stores, for very reasonable prices
  23. Off topic Is the job market really SO awful as some have said? I'm an MA German Lit and will probably do Musicology for the PhD, (I have an earlier MA in music) ... but if I can't get into a top musicology school, I might still go for Germanistik. Is there a market at all? Or should I sell my Duden and try for a New York City cab driver's certificate?
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