Kitkat

So this is my problem with your analysis. You are implying that because there is now a 15-pt spread, instead of a 8-pt spread, that all of a sudden there are the people with similar percentiles, who will be looked at differently because it is a different spread of point. What I am trying to say is that adcomms will be comparing the percentiles, on the same score report and they will see how those two point systems will look next to each other. While we might question some adcomms judgements, I think that for the most part if they say they want scores in the 85%< range, they will still look at those scores, whether it is a 15-pt spread or a 8-pt spread. Especially if ETS is specifically saying that the extra points in that range is to help distinguish among the top most scores. I personally think that it is only fair to distinguish between those at the top. I am sure that a person who is at a 99% would like to be distinguished from a person who got a 94%. But I think that whether it is a 94% on an 8-pt spread or a 94% on a 15-pt scale, that adcomms won't look at them very differently. They don't strike me as that arbitrary, although they seem very arbitrary about other things.

Yes, 155 sounds less impressive then 720. But I think that part of this is just because it is a scale that we are used to using for something like the GRE. When people think GRE they tend to compare it to something like the SAT's. But for the LSAT and MCAT, they use a different scale that is more similar to what this new scale is. I would say that impresiveness at the moment is going to have to depend on your percentiles when they come out, but the way I see it, for schools that I am looking at, percentiles, and not the score I got are what is important. Since the test is new, that is most likely what schools will be looking at. So don't worry so much about how impressive the score is, just try to think about how the school will look at it. If a 75% is good enough on the old scale, then it will be good enough on the new test.

Ok time for a correction to my previous post. The 4-5 wrong would 1) be for the verbal section, 2) would be for each section. For math I would say that you don't want to miss more then 1 or 2 in the first section, and possibly about the same for the second section. That I think would get you the 750-800 range.

I wouldn't think it is all a matter of just how many that you get wrong, but also the level of difficulty of the question. Since it is an adaptive test (unless you are taking the paper based one, then it probably is a matter of how many questions you get right), the best option is try to get as many on the first section right. If you do really well on the first section, you tend to get a harder section on the second section, and there is I think a bit more leeway to get a few more questions wrong and still be able to get a good score. So what I am trying to say is that it is not at simple as saying, "I can only get 2 questions wrong". My estimate is this(based on my power prep experience), you can possibly get 4-5 wrong on each section and be in a good area for engineering, but it all depends on the questions that you get really. Good luck!

Right now all they seem to be saying is "early fall" which I have to admit is pretty vague. Hopefully soon!

So as an update to this subject, I would say yes, you can get something like this on the exam. How do I know? Because I got it on the second section for the quant when I took it in September. Which leads me to the next topic ..... Since it was in my second section, and I got a 740-800 range, I think that this point is correct. I think it is possible that it is something that might only come up if you are in the higher range. I got a few other questions that threw me for a loop on that section.

It depends, are the professional recommendations, relevant to what you what to graduate school for? If they are, and you explain it in a few sentences, then it should be fine. Especially considering its been so long since you have left school, which they will see in your application. But at the same time, I would say to ask the programs you are looking at specifically. Email the programs, explain your situation, and ask if it is ok for you to have two professional recommendations. It is very possible that if they know of the situation, even if they don't normally allow it, they might allow it in your situation.

I think that with a MA you have less emphasis on needing to mentioning a specific professor, but it still might be a good idea, just a point of why that school interests you. And I think that it really depends on the field that you are going into as well. With sciences and what you think you would want to do with it, there are situations where getting a general studies MA is fine. Yes, jellybean's example can be seen as generic. I would use more of an example like, with me and the field I want to go into, " I am interested in X school because of the emphasis on integrating vertebrate evolutionary biology and geology, as well as the ability to gain experience in a museum, with the opportunity to use it's vast resources." The thing is that you can't really get all the information that you want to in a single sentence. Although I think it is slightly a different situation with looking at Ph.D. programs, and M.A. degrees. For you, and what you might want to do, it might be fine to leave it more generic.

I completely I agree with this statement, as well as a good portion of the rest of your statement. But this one line seems to crystallize the point. You are looking at graduate school here. If you really need a headline to help you understand a passage, maybe graduate school isn't the thing for you. I have had plenty of handouts given to me in literature and science classes with out them, and been expected to be able to read and understand them. If you can't do this by the end of college, you might have missed something. Yes, they help, but aren't necessary. As for long sentences, you come across those all the time, and not all of them are necessarily hard or difficult to understand. I am sure that many can be written in several smaller sentences, but that isn't always an improvement, just a change. Little or no punctuation, sure that's a bad thing, but I haven't seen that many signs of it with the GRE yet.

I haven't come across it as a case for this new version of the test. But with other standardized tests, where one of the questions is what title you would give the passage. It might be that in the future that ETS might want to use that as a type of question in the future. I think that they are testing your ability to read and understand what the passage without the help of a title. Yes, you can make an argument that you would never come across something with a title giving you an idea of what it is about. But ETS has never said that they were going to try to make things easy. They go out of their way to try to make it as hard as possible, and this is one of those ways.

art show

Thanks for getting that link up! I thought that I had seen something like that but I couldn't find it.

With the application fee that is necessary to submit to get your application looked at to the cost of the GRE, how much is applying to grad school going to cost you for applying this year? For me, $475 for application fees $240 for first and second takes at the GRE (second time was at the 1/2 price offer for the revised GRE period) $92 to send score reports to the schools I couldn't send with free score reports(4 on top of the ones that I sent out for free) $70 for sending out transcripts Total: $877

So we have a topic already on what not to include/do in an SoP, I was thinking that we should also have a what is good to have in an SoP. This will, I think, be slightly harder, and more field specific in some cases. But I also think that there is also a lot of advice out there that can apply to all SoP's. So my 2 cents for now would be that you should make a point of why you are applying to that program specifically, and what you can bring to that program. These are points that go above and beyond what the rest of the application, and you're chance to add an extra layer of why you should be at that school/program.

With me it was PowerPrep II: 630-730 V, 730-800 Q Actual: 740-800V, 740-800Q So with the quant score fairly accurate, with the verbal less so but in a good way. I think that it is in the luck of the draw on what you get with the verbal, the words I got on the actual I happened to be more familiar with then the ones on the practice. But I think on the actual, I got a harder second section, and verbal was also my 'extra' section. So not so sure about that.

While I completely understand you point on this, I would like to make a point of my own for it. If you look at your scores and the percentiles for those scores from the old test, the highest percentile you could get on the exam was a 94%. This was mainly because so many people were getting a perfect score for the Quant section, mainly by people going into math heavy fields. With this new test they are trying to get it so that you can start telling the difference between the people in the top 6% and more difference in the groups below. So for people who used to get into that group, will now instead get something like a 99% or a 97%. So I don't think that everyone who is scoring in the 750-800 score range are going to be scoring on the lower range necessarily. But there is another reason why I am making this point. There are also people getting scores like 740-800, 700-800 and the like. It is not like there are specific ranges that are being given out. If you make the assumption that the top range for quant, or the verbal either, is more likely to give you a lower range, you would have to make the same assumption for all the other ranges as well. I am assuming that they calculate the ranges all the same over at ETS, to do otherwise seems like more work then is necessary. Previous people have commented that the score range is based on the data that ETS has already gotten on previous experimental sections, and will do a bell curve based on that data.

First I am wondering how you seem to be sure that you missed that many questions? Is it based off of your power prep test? Second, it might also depend on the difficulty level of the questions that you had. Also is there a specific score you are looking for that you feel a need to retake the test? I see that you are a Comp Sci person, I know that many people are looking at getting a higher score on the Q section, so is it that you are trying to get that range a bit higher?

I question that point on the fact that a person can have a really good story, and have done that really well, but not have the best way of delivering said story. I could imagine that if they write badly enough, then yes it can seriously get in the way of a good story. Good writing makes a story better, bad writing can make it worse, but there can be a case for the middle ground where a good story makes up for so so writing style.

There is a lot of talk about what the important parts of an application when applying to grad school. And many places say that they look at the whole package of the applicant. So I am curious to what people think are the important things in Earth and environmental Sciences. I am not saying that one thing is necessarily worth more then another, and therefore you can say GPA is the number one thing. I bring this up specifically for this part of the Forum because my PI says that while he got into a good program with a great GPA and decent GRE, he thinks that he could have done better if he had done research (which he didn't do as an undergrad). So how much weight do people think research has in applying to these programs? GPA and GRE? Does it matter how well you do in the other criteria, and that implying that in the geosciences that they actually do look at the whole package of the student?

I think it should be specific to the school in the sense of why you think you would be a good fit for that school. I would have to agree with Sparky, that you only specify school wise as far as you need to. Yes mention the people you would like to work with, but rather then say "because he does this of that", but more of why what you have done and what you would like to do would work well in relation to what said person is doing. As Sparky said, they already know what they do. It is a matter of showing why you would be a good addition to that program/ lab. So specify what it is about that school that interests you, why you want to be there, what you could bring to the school. And since most schools have few but important differences to why you might what to go there, make that part important.

As a response to those people who say that if you have to read a passage more then one to really understand it, I would like to make a point on this as well for another interpretation. There are several books I have reread because I have enjoyed them. And every time I seem to bring out something new. Its not to say that they are written badly, or that I can't really understand things the first run through, but that at different points in my life I can read it differently. This might be more applicable to fictional works, but a different level of understanding in the reader can affect how they read a passage. This is why I think that so many of the prep books and courses say that if you are familiar with the subject matter in the reading passage might be more difficult for the person, because they are thinking about what else they know. That is not the issue in a way that a person might think about the GRE passages, in the sense that many people think that they are just poorly written. But at the same time, I think that I have seen enough people on this website alone who have seemed to have done perfectly well on the GRE to think that it is not a matter of them being poorly written. It might be more of them being poorly edited for the test, because they do that. And I think that other posters are perfectly right to say that some of the stuff you will be writing in your future career will not necessarily be the best writing you will ever come across. It's not so much to ask that you can find the sense in that material as well as the better written material.

You can try to get a copy of the ETS practice tests. They have a whole book of them. Amazon has it, but I am sure that other places have it as well.

Yeah, when I took the test, during the 10 min break I was allowed to go get water, eat some food (as long as I went into the hall), and whatever. It falls about half way through the test. I dunno if that is enough for you? But the strictness seems to mainly be about the room you are taking in itself. Less so in the whole testing area. Once you step out into the hall, which is allowed, then whatever. Eat what you need to.

Its still a good score on the test. I see that you're applying to chemistry programs. Did any of them want you to have a higher verbal score, or did you want a higher score just to be sure that it wouldn't keep you out? I think that the quant would be more important and I think you did as good as you could hope for on that section. Great job!

I did something similar to orst11, but for the most part left the reading comp for the end, unless they were small one question type reading comps. I did it this way mainly for my timing of it. How I actually got through the reading comps was first to do a quick skimming of the passage to see what was what in it. Then I looked at the first question, figured out what part of the passage was in and go through that part fairly closely. If there were more questions for that passage, I didn't bother to reread it for each question, but found the section that I needed, and focused on that part. If I was having a hard time with a question, I just skipped it and went back to it later. That actually was a good thing for several of the questions, because I was starting to zone out on them.