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misterpat

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Everything posted by misterpat

  1. Activism isn't going to get you a job or help you pay off the debt you accrue there. They booed John McCain when he spoke at their graduation. During the election, I thought that was cool. In hindsight, it just makes them look like a bunch of dicks.
  2. Get a better vocabulary. Make a defining sentence for the analogies. Instead of thinking "temperature is to thermometer, as x is to y," make a sentence like "temperature is measured by a thermometer. Maybe you're already doing this. Just do as many practice questions as possible, and review your answers. You'll get the hang of it.
  3. No prinout, though I highly doubt you will forget those numbers.
  4. Hm. Looks like I think I know more than I do. I've never seen a department website state that they take the best of your scores from each section. I have seen many say they consider all scores available. So if you define that as counting your highest from each, then they probably will. But if you mean counting only the highest from each examination, I don't (or didn't) think that was very common. HOWEVER, since I'm now being called out (and rightfully so), I've consulted PowerScore's website: http://www.powerscore.com/gre/help/multiple_scores.htm They are of the opinion that departments fall into two main categories: 1. All scores are reviewed, and score increases are emphasized Many schools consider your portfolio of GRE performances, but they place special emphasis on score increases. For example, the University of Michigan states: The Admissions Committee will be given all of the applicants
  5. I enjoyed that op-ed a lot. Yeah, the AW sucks. The argument essay isn't so bad, but the issue topics usually don't give you much to work with. Taking a controversial position can often get you a high score, like the Debbie Does Dallas approach in that op-ed, but if it falls into the hands of some nancy-pants grader, you're fucked.
  6. I have seen it before. It's kind of a queer thing to google for in the abstract, so this was one of the first results I came up with: Ph.D. APPLICANTS: Domestic students with an M.S. degree in Computer Science AND applying to the Ph.D. degree program AND NOT requiring Departmental financial assistance may REQUEST a GRE waiver provided ALL of the following minimum conditions are met: 1. An M.S. degree in Computer Science from an accredited U.S. university with a minimum GPA of 3.6 and have met all the required pre-requisite courses. 2. Have significant job related experience in computer science. Make sure that at least one of the letters of recommendation comes from your employer/supervisor and talks about your experience and capability in Computer Science. Granted, this is from University of Maryland - Baltimore County (http://www.cs.umbc.edu/CSEE/grad/faq.ht ... aiver_Form). But such waivers exist (though possibly only at 2nd tier schools, but that's another story), so do explore your options.
  7. I remember browsing their site and checking out the "Liberal Studies" program and finding this, to my considerable horror: "What can a student write about? Almost anything. Take, for example, these recent theses: Exploring Single Women in Sex and the City and Beyond " That's the FIRST example. Knowing that this student paid to write this thesis is kind of depressing and, at least for me, says NSSR will happily take your money no matter how trivial you research interests are. From what I can tell, New School's programs are like the UChicago MAPSS program or NYU and Harvard's Liberal Studies MA degrees, only without the benefits of a prestigious name on your degree and access to world-class faculty.
  8. Good stuff. Thanks for the responses, both of you. I mean, I'm not just trying to add length to my statement from last year for the sake of making it longer. I'm practically starting anew. I think mine from last year needs to be a bit longer, but I wanted confirmation that people's statements are roughly as long as mine. If I was competing with others who were writing about every historiographical issue they're interested in, I didn't want to appear incapable of competing. But I'm convinced you're right about concision being the name of the game. That's probably useful info for the sample, too. I was a bit worried about using a 12-15 pg. paper last year, but I think I'm going to go with it this time.
  9. Well, I think you should certainly play up your family experience. Obviously try to set yourself apart from him for the most part, but growing up in an academic family should alert ad-comms that you know what the life of an academic is like. I would avoid submitting one of your co-authored papers as your writing sample, however. Most department websites advise against that. Note the publications on your academic resume, and talk about the process in your statement of purpose. I would also avoid using your father as a letter of recommendation writer (because he's obviously not going to give them the whole truth about you, warts and all). Good luck on the TOEFL. :wink:
  10. Correct. Once per calendar month - meaning you could take it on September 30th, and the next day, October 1st.
  11. Poli Sci students score pretty high on that exam. Your credentials sound impressive, so maybe you don't have to re-take it. But they aren't going to let you use the Quant from the first test and the Verbal from the second. Doesn't work that way.
  12. UIUC's department focuses on that quite a bit, if I recall correctly.
  13. Aside from learning the question types and NOT answering synonyms for the antonym questions, etc., you really can't improve your verbal score significantly in 3 days. Perhaps peruse a list of the "100 most common GRE words" or something like that. Good luck 8)
  14. There has to be answers for you in another thread. I'm pretty sure I've answered this question within the last month.
  15. To those of you still hanging around from last years admissions cycle, and I suppose those with an opinion applying this year: how long was/is your statement of purpose? It seems to me that different departments have different guidelines. The example Berkeley provides is a bit longer than mine was: http://ls.berkeley.edu/soc/forms/statem ... urpose.pdf. Some made it sound like 2-3 pages was more than sufficient, while others seemed open to a substantially lengthier SOP. University of Arizona, for example, specifies that the statement should be 2-10 pages (http://history.arizona.edu/graduates/prospective.php). The Arizona example should lay to rest any ideas about a direct relationship between relative prestige and length expectations (not a knock on Arizona, one of my favorite professors from college had his PhD from there). The opposite might even be true. Columbia and Michigan probably get 4 times as many applications as Arizona, so I could see them being irked by a presumptuous applicant submitting a 10 page statement of purpose (seriously, what if everyone did?). Anyway, mine was a bit on the short side last year. I'm going to go with a longer approach this time around, but I'm curious how much detail I can go into, how many topics I have room to bring up, etc. I'm thinking 4 pages is probably a good length, but I'm interested to hear if anyone thinks that's too long.
  16. Buy a book. Study hard. Take a lot of practice tests. Develop good habits in your non-GRE existence (e.g. looking up a word you encounter that you don't know). You can take it as many times as you please, albeit only once per calendar month. Your highest score is usually the score taken into consideration by departments. However, if you take the test twelve times, you will look annoying and neurotic (not to mention not very bright) and may give faculty members second thoughts about inviting you to hang around them for the better half of a decade.
  17. Haven't used it. The LSAT bibles are highly venerated. But that doesn't necessarily mean anything. For example, Barrons is supposedly a great GRE manual, but their LSAT book is supposedly garbage. I can only recommend what I know: Princeton Review. Full disclosure: I work for them (though I'm a teacher and don't stand to gain from you buying our stuff). But I did use WordSmart for the GRE to study, and scored above 95th percentile on Verbal. Pluuuuuuuuuuus if you are struggling with math, I think our approach to the Quantitative section is WAY better than Kaplan's (which is what I used when I studied for the exam). Best of luck.
  18. I know nothing about your field. What I do know that Robert Smale of University of Missouri (ranked in the 50s) is excellent and focuses on Bolivia. Don't know if that helps any. Good luck.
  19. misterpat

    xxx

    Only if they offer to do so.
  20. Since you are an interntional student, consider your command of English. A 620 is a pretty good verbal score that even a lot of native speakers can't achieve. And your quant score is very good for sociology. And deckard has apparently received different advice than I have, but I've heard the AW is considered the least important section. Plus, because of your stated difficulty with writing, it's going to be hard to improve your AW score all that much. Style matters quite a bit when you get into the 5-6 range, so a 4.5 might realistically be where you peak out (without an absurd amount of time spent preparing). GRE scores matter. But I don't think they will matter enough to justify the amount of time you will need to spend studying GRE stuff in order to be confident you will do better next time. That time could be used more efficiently crafting your statement and reading books by faculty you want to work with.
  21. Ha this happened to me. They didn't need 20th century US at a place or two I applied and lost in the funding round.
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