Derpster0

Honestly, this post is so true. I applied to only a single program, and got offered full tuition + stipend funding. It's more than enough for me to live on as well. I don't even consider myself a particularly impressive applicant.

Well this was an informative thread. I'll probably end up grabbing one of those livescribe smartpens and a cheap Android tablet/keyboard combination thing. No need for any $800 surface pros or lenovo yogas or anything like that.

There's no need to try to improve beyond 164V and 158Q. Maybe you could benefit from getting above 160Q if you plan on going into a field that uses a lot of math, but 164v/158q is not "just good." I'm pretty sure that's almost 90th percentile for both tests..

I thought they were pretty similar. I did about as well on the actual GRE (166v, 152q, 5AW) as I would have expected to based on the practice tests.

Should be calendar days, not business. I said this because yesterday was exactly only one week since I took the test, and my scores came in last night. If it was business days, then that would mean my scores came in within the first 5 days. It's still pretty early in terms of calendar days as well, but at least it's closer to the 10-15 day window usually given.

Thanks for the insight. I guess I'll just end up putting in the apps and seeing how it goes.

Not taking on debt seems like something that is easier said than done. Are assistantships something that we see at the Masters level frequently or no? I'll be putting in some applications either at the end of the year or maybe early 2017. If I can figure out a way to get an MPA with little or no debt then I'd be all for it.

Jesus, dude.. We live in an old folks' world these days. Everyone who is anyone is old as hell, from politics to academia. You should do something about that massive chip on your shoulder/all that insecurity of yours.

I never took the SAT, but I doubt the vocab would be the same as GRE. The two tests are targeted at people with very different levels of education. From what I understand, the GRE verbal is trickier and more convoluted. Anyway, I took the GRE the other day and got a 166(96th percentile) on the verbal portion. Two months ago, I purchased a Kaplan GRE study book and answered all the practice questions on it. Then I went through the 10 practice sets on the internet that came with the book. I did about 5 of the quantitative practice sets, and 2 or 3 of the full-length practice exams. I did this while also taking classes, so I'd say you should be fine, assuming you generally do pretty well on tests like I do.

Wait, really? That's kind of concerning for me, because I did my GRE on the 10th and it says "absent/scores unavailable" like DBear's does..

Have you looked into Penn State? They have been doing distance learning for a long time.

sjoh197 is right that your unofficial verbal and quant scores show up immediately after the test. Thank god for that, because I just took mine on the 10th, and I couldn't imagine having to wait two weeks to learn how I did on those two sections. It's bad enough not knowing how well I did on the AW section, especially since people on this board seem to be saying that they do poorly even if they expect to do well.