Eigen

You forgot Charlie Parker and J.J. Johnson.

Yes, you've got a point of course. But please don't forget that this forum is for people to help and support each other, one for all and all for one, etc. (Yeah I know it's sappy, but it's important!)

And in the 60's Miles Davis, Coleman, Coltrane, etc made it up on the spot and it was all brilliant.

I'm just messing with you!




These threads are all the same. If we get a good writing score we want justifications that we are great writers and that adom committees will care. If scores suck we want justifications ad committees do not care.

I think (as mentioned above), way too many prospective grad students put too much stock into GRE scores- they're a hoop you jump through, but not a particularly important one.

Talking to our AdComm, scores basically fall into three categories: Didn't meet the minimum requirement, met the minimum requirement, or the "it's really high" category. These all differ from school to school, but really all that matters is meeting the minimum for the department/school. Past that, they care more about your GPA, your research experience, and your letters of rec.

They realize that the GRE is a short, segmented window to show your skills. They realize that not everyone tests well. They know that essays were only written in 30 minutes. And while it's good to show that you can perform under pressure to meet specific, and convoluted goals, they're not going to base more on that 4 hour test than on the 4-5 years of work that you're showing in the other parts of your application.

Just something to keep in mind.

To be honest, and I don't mean to start a massive argument or to insult your writing skills (which I'm honestly certain are superior to my own), but isn't crafting your writing to the requisite format part of being a skilled essayist? I mean seriously, when you're submitting to a journal, a dissertation committee, or a conference, you're structuring your argument and changing the scope of your work to the requirements at hand. Why should the AW section be any different? Yes, I understand it's only in half an hour, and that it takes but a minute to be graded - both of which are ludicrous. But if you realize that to pander to such a system necessitates key introduction/conclusion/transition words, basic structure, clarity of prose, and impressive vocabulary, then why can't you provide them if for no other reason than to do well on the test? I would never publish something with which I wasn't comfortable, but I would certainly change my style for one essay in this situation.

Well, that's my two cents, anyway.

They aren't all "egraders" or "computer graders," my best friend's mom grades AWAs for ETS. She's been a Rutgers composition professor for YEARS. And from what she's told me, every essay gets a once over with human eyes. I know its a frustrating test, but this really seems like you're trying default the possibility of you getting any score under perfect as "the computer's fault" or "ETS's fault," when in reality, it's not. This is the game, play it their way or don't play it all.

Furthermore, it irritates me that people think that just because they have high verbal scores means they got cheated on the AWA. Writing and verbal test very different things. I have a perfect score on the writing and a slightly above average (~80% percentile) verbal. Good writers are able to adapt to the needs of their work. A need here is to adapt to their dry style. If you can't change your writing style on the fly to a very basic, run of the mill standard, then really how good fo a writer are you?

My wife and I got married while still undergrads, but we're in grad school now.

We were able to put together our entire wedding for around $1800, for over 300 people. It all depends what your priorities are.

That said, getting married makes your taxes lower! So it's a financial benefit

PhD. And yeah, it's quite rare.

Was a perfect storm of us already being in town, and them having someone drop out of the Fall 2010 spot, leaving them some available funding.

She had applied to start Fall 2011, but since she was local and had her app in, they offered her the chance to start early.

Did you read the rest of the first paragraph, with a revised statement that might put it in better perspective for you?

Maybe that doesn't make a difference in relation to your second point, but I was thinking it might.

That said, I think those two statements go together quite nicely- a generalization followed with the personal and anecdotal evidence leading to the making of the generalization.

I'm sorry you seem to be taking what you are from my statements, the reason I'm continuing the discussion is I really don't think you should be taking "if you're finding it challenging, you're stupid" from my statements. You should more be taking "if you're making your classes challenging, you're doing grad school right".

My wife and I got married while still undergrads, but we're in grad school now.

We were able to put together our entire wedding for around $1800, for over 300 people. It all depends what your priorities are.

That said, getting married makes your taxes lower! So it's a financial benefit

The GRE. Seriously. For one thing, it's not exactly a brilliant tool to use to assess someone's potential and admissions teams know this. It's nothing like the be-all and end-all of your applications that so many believe it to be; i'd personally be more concerned with getting my writing sample, recommendations and SOP perfect before i gave even one second's thought to the GRE. For a second thing, it's not even that difficult.

I'm coming from the UK educational system and i've never taken a standardised test in my life. I've never done an analogies or antonyms test, for example (whereas i believe they're common practice in the US from about middle school, no?) Moreover, the UK system forces students to begin specialising their education from the age of 15/16 and, to that end, i haven't had a maths lesson or taken an exam in maths (or physics, or anything involving maths) since i was 15. I didn't do any revision for the test and showed up yesterday to take it not even having used the PowerPrep CD that ETS sent me (it cracked in half in the post). I don't think i did too badly:
670 verbal (95%ile), 720 quantitative (75%ile). The Q score, especially, is not too shabby for someone who hasn't seen an exponent or a root sign or, indeed, anything remotely mathsy, since their early teens.

This surely goes to show that it's not difficult... no? Truly, it's really *not* a taxing test. Granted, i would have liked a better verbal score, and had i put a bit of effort into brushing up on my obscure vocab then i'm sure i could have... but it's so, so not something to sweat over. It's not a massive ordeal and it simply doesn't take months of swotting to get a decent score. Living proof, right here.

Chill, breathe, it's not that bad!

I still need more suggestions guys on my problem that I posted regarding shifting from PhD to MA
due to poor health and if I can get another admission if i reapply for fall 2011
please read my previous topic

Hey, truth is always the funniest stuff :-D I have yet to meet a graduate student that thought their coursework was particularly challenging.... Or a graduate adviser that thought it should be.

The head of our department regularly tells us that classes are overrated, and the sooner we get out of them into "real" graduate work, the better.... And it's the same thing I hear repeated over and over from others.

Please don't "over universalize" my statement. I said that by and large graduate coursework is not supposed to be challenging. And perhaps it would be better to say that, by and large, in terms of grading, graduate coursework isn't supposed to be challenging. As I said, it's about setting your own degree of rigor in how completely you want to learn something- the push for excellence isn't pushed in the "top down" approach it is as an undergrad, where grading sets the degree of rigor. It's rare for people to earn even a "graduate" failing grade (C+ or thereabouts), and as the OP mentioned, it's well possible to just skate through the material and get As.

I'm not going to say my first semester quantum courses didn't have a ton of challenging material, or assignments that made me stay up several nights in a row to get done... But I don't think there was anyone in our class that didn't walk away with a B+ or better. The challenge comes in what you want to get out of the course, not in what the teacher makes you put into it, imo.

So the OP complaining that he doesn't have to put much work in to get A's and that's a bad thing strikes me as off. Grad school isn't about working just as hard as you need to get the A. It's about gaining a mastery of the material that you need to be able to apply in whatever subdiscipline you're working in.

Did you read the rest of the first paragraph, with a revised statement that might put it in better perspective for you?

Maybe that doesn't make a difference in relation to your second point, but I was thinking it might.

That said, I think those two statements go together quite nicely- a generalization followed with the personal and anecdotal evidence leading to the making of the generalization.

I'm sorry you seem to be taking what you are from my statements, the reason I'm continuing the discussion is I really don't think you should be taking "if you're finding it challenging, you're stupid" from my statements. You should more be taking "if you're making your classes challenging, you're doing grad school right".

no wonder chem courses are so easy, reading comprehension doesn't seem to be too highly valued.

Did you read the rest of the first paragraph, with a revised statement that might put it in better perspective for you?

Maybe that doesn't make a difference in relation to your second point, but I was thinking it might.

That said, I think those two statements go together quite nicely- a generalization followed with the personal and anecdotal evidence leading to the making of the generalization.

I'm sorry you seem to be taking what you are from my statements, the reason I'm continuing the discussion is I really don't think you should be taking "if you're finding it challenging, you're stupid" from my statements. You should more be taking "if you're making your classes challenging, you're doing grad school right".

Please don't "over universalize" my statement. I said that by and large graduate coursework is not supposed to be challenging. And perhaps it would be better to say that, by and large, in terms of grading, graduate coursework isn't supposed to be challenging. As I said, it's about setting your own degree of rigor in how completely you want to learn something- the push for excellence isn't pushed in the "top down" approach it is as an undergrad, where grading sets the degree of rigor. It's rare for people to earn even a "graduate" failing grade (C+ or thereabouts), and as the OP mentioned, it's well possible to just skate through the material and get As.

I'm not going to say my first semester quantum courses didn't have a ton of challenging material, or assignments that made me stay up several nights in a row to get done... But I don't think there was anyone in our class that didn't walk away with a B+ or better. The challenge comes in what you want to get out of the course, not in what the teacher makes you put into it, imo.

So the OP complaining that he doesn't have to put much work in to get A's and that's a bad thing strikes me as off. Grad school isn't about working just as hard as you need to get the A. It's about gaining a mastery of the material that you need to be able to apply in whatever subdiscipline you're working in.

I'm not in library science either, but I think this broadly applies to all graduate programs: coursework by and large isn't supposed to be challenging. You're supposed to set your own degree of rigor, it's not set for you in the classroom.

Going from undergrad to grad school (granted, you're in a masters program so this doesn't apply quite as much) is going from a primarily coursework based program to one where coursework is usually only general overview/of peripheral importance. It gives a general framework, usually rather laid back, from which you expand your own base of knowledge in a (usually) much more specified area.

Hey, truth is always the funniest stuff :-D I have yet to meet a graduate student that thought their coursework was particularly challenging.... Or a graduate adviser that thought it should be.

The head of our department regularly tells us that classes are overrated, and the sooner we get out of them into "real" graduate work, the better.... And it's the same thing I hear repeated over and over from others.

Did you read the rest of the first paragraph, with a revised statement that might put it in better perspective for you?

Maybe that doesn't make a difference in relation to your second point, but I was thinking it might.

That said, I think those two statements go together quite nicely- a generalization followed with the personal and anecdotal evidence leading to the making of the generalization.

I'm sorry you seem to be taking what you are from my statements, the reason I'm continuing the discussion is I really don't think you should be taking "if you're finding it challenging, you're stupid" from my statements. You should more be taking "if you're making your classes challenging, you're doing grad school right".

Please don't "over universalize" my statement. I said that by and large graduate coursework is not supposed to be challenging. And perhaps it would be better to say that, by and large, in terms of grading, graduate coursework isn't supposed to be challenging. As I said, it's about setting your own degree of rigor in how completely you want to learn something- the push for excellence isn't pushed in the "top down" approach it is as an undergrad, where grading sets the degree of rigor. It's rare for people to earn even a "graduate" failing grade (C+ or thereabouts), and as the OP mentioned, it's well possible to just skate through the material and get As.

I'm not going to say my first semester quantum courses didn't have a ton of challenging material, or assignments that made me stay up several nights in a row to get done... But I don't think there was anyone in our class that didn't walk away with a B+ or better. The challenge comes in what you want to get out of the course, not in what the teacher makes you put into it, imo.

So the OP complaining that he doesn't have to put much work in to get A's and that's a bad thing strikes me as off. Grad school isn't about working just as hard as you need to get the A. It's about gaining a mastery of the material that you need to be able to apply in whatever subdiscipline you're working in.

Hey, truth is always the funniest stuff :-D I have yet to meet a graduate student that thought their coursework was particularly challenging.... Or a graduate adviser that thought it should be.

The head of our department regularly tells us that classes are overrated, and the sooner we get out of them into "real" graduate work, the better.... And it's the same thing I hear repeated over and over from others.

Did you read the rest of the first paragraph, with a revised statement that might put it in better perspective for you?

Maybe that doesn't make a difference in relation to your second point, but I was thinking it might.

That said, I think those two statements go together quite nicely- a generalization followed with the personal and anecdotal evidence leading to the making of the generalization.

I'm sorry you seem to be taking what you are from my statements, the reason I'm continuing the discussion is I really don't think you should be taking "if you're finding it challenging, you're stupid" from my statements. You should more be taking "if you're making your classes challenging, you're doing grad school right".

Please don't "over universalize" my statement. I said that by and large graduate coursework is not supposed to be challenging. And perhaps it would be better to say that, by and large, in terms of grading, graduate coursework isn't supposed to be challenging. As I said, it's about setting your own degree of rigor in how completely you want to learn something- the push for excellence isn't pushed in the "top down" approach it is as an undergrad, where grading sets the degree of rigor. It's rare for people to earn even a "graduate" failing grade (C+ or thereabouts), and as the OP mentioned, it's well possible to just skate through the material and get As.

I'm not going to say my first semester quantum courses didn't have a ton of challenging material, or assignments that made me stay up several nights in a row to get done... But I don't think there was anyone in our class that didn't walk away with a B+ or better. The challenge comes in what you want to get out of the course, not in what the teacher makes you put into it, imo.

So the OP complaining that he doesn't have to put much work in to get A's and that's a bad thing strikes me as off. Grad school isn't about working just as hard as you need to get the A. It's about gaining a mastery of the material that you need to be able to apply in whatever subdiscipline you're working in.

I'm not in library science either, but I think this broadly applies to all graduate programs: coursework by and large isn't supposed to be challenging. You're supposed to set your own degree of rigor, it's not set for you in the classroom.

Going from undergrad to grad school (granted, you're in a masters program so this doesn't apply quite as much) is going from a primarily coursework based program to one where coursework is usually only general overview/of peripheral importance. It gives a general framework, usually rather laid back, from which you expand your own base of knowledge in a (usually) much more specified area.