UnAltroEgitto

Hi everybody! I guess this is the last time I stop by to say hello. I've received an outstanding score of 9 rejections out of 9 applications (some of those weren't even sent, I had to solicit multiple times). So... well, I guess that's it, I won't come back next year, as I already dedicated my entire life and sacrificed oh-so-many things for something that didn't happen and will have very little chances to happen in the future. I'm not a young student anymore, fluent in five languages, got two B.A.s, an M.A. and a Master Degree, 330 on the GRE and 118 on the Toefl test, my gpa is a solid 4.0 for every single University I attended (and almost every single course I've taken), and I have won grants and scholarships for many bits of my work. Still not enough. I'm not whining about stats and numbers, I know they are 'cold' and don't tell all the story, and I'm not even here looking for solace; I'm just stating the fact that I've done everything that was within and beyond the range of my capabilities. Can't go much further, no "plan B" for me. Probably I just don't fit in well, or I am not good enough, or maybe I've just been unlucky. To be honest, at this point I don't care. I'm sending out a huge 'good luck' message to those of you going for another try next year, or whatever your plan will be. I really hope you'll succeed. Best.

Thank you, Nathan. I have looked into the programs you suggested, and I find them really interesting. I think that, with the sole exception of Notre Dame, CUNY and UConn do mirror my range of interests, and thus, I will most likely apply to both Departments. Thanks again for the hint and the info. UConn, in particular, looks like a very desirable place to work on logic indeed.

I apologize, then. I thought it was more straightforward.

Hello Aash (mind if I call you that?). The answer is easy: every question counts as 1 point. Both in the Verbal and in the Quant sections. The minimum score you can get is 130, the maximum is 170. So there are 40 points. You get 40 questions on the test, so... voilà. Most of the quant questions are about ratios, geometry, and percentage manipulation. Look into this topics and you'll do just fine.

Thanks for sharing your thoughts on this! I am really undecided whether should I take the test again or not, and I am glad to have heard your opinion. Certainly, the fact that the nearest test center is almost 400 kilometers (250 miles ca.) distant from where I live doesn't help at all. It exacerbates the stress and the tiring pressure of the test itself. I see your field is East Asian Studies. That's neat. I am also about to get a second B.A. in Japanese Language and Literature from the University of Venice, and I've spent my Summer in Japan between Kyoto and Tokyo to dive into research and to visit some friends. Ciao! I have introduced myself in the Philosophy forum as well. While hinting at Philosophy, I deemed this section accurate to give away some general GRE impressions, though it became clear soon enough that I was mostly speaking to a 'Philosophy' audience. My complaints, however, still hold a broad and non-specific view on the test, to which I keep looking with discomfort. I will follow your intimation and see if I can find relevant information from the professors at my University, even if they hardly compromise with the trivialities of evaluating the weight of something such a GRE score, since they don't even require to know what it is about. By the way, taking the test again on December 24th and sending immediatly the scores will put me in a head-to-head last-lap run against the deadlines. Are the Departments usually flexible on this regard? I certainly know that, unless stated otherwise, I wouldn't risk to have my application discarded only because of the GRE scores.

Good day everyone. I am a soon-to-be applicant to a Ph.D. program in the U.S. Actually, as of yet, none of my applications is ready, and I am still wondering if I should take the GRE test again just in time for abiding with the deadlines (by the way, I just opened a thread with some impressions of my GRE experience, If you are curious.) I am Italian, educated in Italy, and I have devoted my B.A. to contemporary Philosophy while my M.A. has solely revolved around Math Logic, and this is now my only field of interest, together with A.I. (not to be confused with Philosophy of Mind, though) and Natural Language Processing. Indeed, I am about to complete a Master's degree in Big Data Analytics and at the moment I am working as a researcher on some neural network applications. Last year I submitted four applications to Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, and was admitted in all of them, but after spending a long and excoriating time racking my brain on whether to accept or turn down the offers, I decided to enroll in the above-stated master program instead, and only now I am ready to send new thoughtful applications. My M.A. thesis took me almost three years to write and was advised both by the Philosophy and Mathematics Departments. It was about some abstruse Model Theoretic theorem and its systemic implication. I know it may sound presumptuous, but I will apply to the MiT, Carnegie Mellon, Irvine, Davis, Texas and, maybe, UGA programs. For those with a strong penchant in Logic, the choice is limited to the Departments that have a dedicated path, and one cannot be cautious enough in looking for the right faculty members that are capable of providing adequate interest in supervision (in this regard, U of Washington, U of British Columbia, and few others, when contacted, have told me they won't be able to follow me, i.e. they are not interested.) That's pretty much it for now, glad to have met this site!

Dear Cafè, nice to meet you. It is strange that I get to come across this community only now, since my long acquaintance with Philosophy. I guess I am not that much of a forum dweller after all. As the thread title suggests, I'd like to give you some impressions of my first - and probably last, but I'll earnestly ask your take on this - GRE test, that I took 10 days ago. I have to say, it felt exhausting and a little unfair. I should premise that I am not a native English speaker (in fact, I am Italian), and I never studied in an English-speaking environment, so the verbal section probably felt more taxing to me. Besides, after the four mandatory sections I was pretty smooth and confident, conscious that I was in control of the situation. And then the extra section came, and it was a verbal one. I was so tired I could barely look at the screen; furthermore, I was submitted a particularly tedious and long five-paragraph wall of text with four or five garbled and involved questions to follow. I almost dozed off, and from that moment on the rest of the section went south. Not drastically, but significantly. All except the text completion and "words alike" sentences, which I usually find pretty easy to tame. In the end, I am 100% positive that the last section has marred my score, and now I have to deal with a vapid evenhanded 160 - 160, which I glean on a general scale is not bad but for Ph.D. puropose in Philosophy is rather egregious. Well, I also should point out that my field of expertise is Mathematical Logic, Model Theory and Computational Logic, so maybe the departments I am interested in will agree to value this good balance even in spite of the very low verbal score? I don't know. II could give it another shot the upcoming 24th (!!) December, but, unfortunately, all the application deadlines are coming up early January, so I doubt it would be of any use. I almost feel I have been treaten unfairly by the test. I don't really see why pushing a third random extra section that could replace the one on which you score the best. It looks like an incentive to repeat the test as many times as you can until you find the perfect scenario for you. When I took the Toefl-ibt last year, I scored 112 and - not only because the score was pretty good! - no part of it seemed unfair: everything you do is valued. All in all, I am pretty satisfied with my score because I know I cannot speak-write-think in English as I do in Italian and because I only had a month and a half to prepare (in the spare time, to say the least). Still, I am terribly dissatisfied - paradox! - because I know a better score would be easily at hand but simply there is not enough time anymore. The bird has flown. I can only hope my applications will not be too much hampered by this. Tell me what you think guys, I just needed to share this bittersweet situation with some fellows.