cheburashka

I plan to submit the first 10 pages of an article as my writing sample (primarily because the rest of it won't be finished before some early Dec 1 deadlines). Would it be odd to include the article's abstract at the beginning, i.e. journal format? I'd like to give an idea of my overall argument and content, and I feel like adding the abstract would do that in lieu of a finished conclusion. I don't have another paper that I can submit in my intended subfield because I've been out of school for some time. I'm worried that it might come across as strange or unnecessary though - am I overthinking this?

I agree with ^. I would slip in a reference to the award when talking about the content of your work. Also, I'd get rid of the all those uses of the passive voice in your paragraph. It will make it much less wordy and convoluted.

For those of you who have already taken the GRE and have studied from multiple books w/CDs/online, which one had the practice CAT that gave you the score closest to your actual GRE score later? I have taken two CAT from different sources, and the scores I got were VASTLY different. I'm trying to gauge how I'm doing, but now I'm not sure what to think! I'm studying from Kaplan, PowerPrep, and Barron's. I'm guessing it's PowerPrep, but then again it doesn't seem like their stuff has been updated all that recently. Thanks!