greysquirrel

Hey guys, I just did my GRE, I scored 800Q, 760V. I promised myself that I would post on here if I did well, because I did a lot of practice tests that gave me HORRIBLE scores. I am focussing on Quant because that's more important for me and for many of you too. Sorry in advance if you are all about the verbal.

1. DO NOT purchase anything from graduatetestprep.com or grebible.com. Not only do their practice tests woefully underscore you (I got a 760Q, a 655Q and a 650Q on tests from these companies last week) but their practice material sucks. It's not like what's on the real GRE and I believe some of their questions have mistakes.

2. DO NOT pay any attention to any free online CAT tests. They're all going to massively underscore you.

3. DO purchase Barrons and/or Kaplan's guides, but again, don't trust their CAT test scores. The books themselves are good indicators of most of the questions you will see, though they do not cover the very hardest questions it is possible to get on the GRE. For this, I recommend "EZ" guide's "Advanced Math" workbook which is full of the hardest problems you can get on the GRE. This book was my bible. I did every question in here twice. But like I said, the test scores on the CAT from Barron is not indicative: I got 700Q on the practice CAT from Barron, a mere 5 days before my real test.

4. USE POWERPREP, both the practice exercises and the practice tests. These tests are the best indicator you have of how you are going for the real one. But know that you can improve your score in the real GRE by remaining calm and focussed. If you time your preparation right, you should peak in the GRE and not before it. I got 790 and 770 on my powerprep tests, and got an 800 in the real one. This is because I was more mentally focussed, well rested and calm in the test.

5. The GRE rewards the ability to focus, and to focus, you have to manage your anxiety. If you have problems with nervousness or anxiety, or you feel very stressed about the test, you must get on top of this before the day of the test. Try meditation, breathing techniques, anything that helps. If you prepare well (I prepped for a solid 3 weeks from 3 books) you should believe that you are going to do well, even if you get horrible practice scores - just tell yourself you're going to peak in the test. Your own strong belief that you will do well is very important. Never panic in the actual test. Assume you are going well and focus on doing each question as you go. I got questions that I thought were way too easy in the quant and I thought maybe I had made a stupid mistake before, but I immediately dismissed this thought and continued to solve the problems. I took as much time as I needed for the first 15 questions to ensure I got them all right. Then I spent about 1 minute on each of the following questions, and guessed 2 of the last 4.

I hope this helps some of you not to panic if you get bad practice marks, and saves you some anxiety! Good luck!

"The next time someone asks you for an honest critique...don't rip out their gizzards and hold them in front of their face. What you did was very spiteful, but it was also very brave and very honest and I respect you for doing that. But the content of what you said has made me hate you. So there's a layer of respect, admittedly, for your truthfulness, but it's peppered with hate. Hateful respect." -Aldous Snow


(I was going to post a video of this but couldn't find one, LOL.)

- memorize your graduate handbook. it will have all the timelines you need to meet, the courses you need to take, the requirements you need to fulfill. your advisor, believe it or not, will not actually know this stuff. s/he will know that there are certain things you need to do to meet your requirements, but s/he won't actually know what those things are. it's up to you to be on top of it. sometimes, the director of grad studies won't even know what it is you need to do. frustrating, but as long as you have the department handbook to back you up, you'll be okay.

- learn to value yourself for something other than being smart. everyone in your program is smart. everyone is used to getting the top grades in their class. you will no longer be the best and the brightest. you will also frequently be told that your work isn't good. the grades themselves don't matter anymore, it's the comments in the margins that let you know your work was inadequate. you will have weeks or months of self-doubting, you will read your advisor's every twitch and tick as evidence of his/her contempt for your mediocrity.

like yourself because you're funny, because you're creative, because you can run a marathon, because you can fix things with your hands, because you actually had the "wild years" (or "tumultuous years") that your colleagues heard so much about when they were in the library/lab. but do NOT like yourself only for your intelligence, because within a year, you won't feel smart anymore. i've given this pep talk to colleagues of mine that were having panic attacks when they thought they wouldn't get research funding or that their advisor hated their work, and it rarely sinks in for most of them, because they've always been "the smart one" and can't yet see themselves as anything else. it's time to let that go. even the students with 4.0 GPAs, who breeze through their thesis/comps/overview, who hold big-time national fellowships have days/weeks/months of feeling stupid.

- know the department politics. if there's a universally-hated faculty member, you should know that before you start bringing that person onto various committees. if that universally-hated faculty member is your advisor, you need to know that too, because it will be up to you to cultivate strong relationships with other faculty. they'll need to like you because they don't like your prof.

- don't date within your department. seriously. it's too incestuous and breeds competition within a relationship or between couples. grad school isn't on the buddy-system. you don't need to pair up with someone the first month you get here.

My adviser called me a waste of money earlier this week, even though just last week, she was happy with my progress. I am really down about it now.

I know I've kind of blacklisted myself from here, but I have nowhere else to turn to. I think I've been working hard. Am I a waste of money???? I'm scared.

I'm railing against the genre more than the specific writer. It is quite obvious that school isn't for everyone. And it is for some people, but only to a certain level. And I do agree with StrangeLight that because someone decides that academia isn't for them does not make them deficient or a failure - they just figured out what works for them. But this whole genre of blogs about how awful grad school is just becomes so tedious when they repeat all the problems as if they were the only ones to suffer them, or as though all of us applying are ignorant rubes unaware of the risks. The fact that they are making so many complaints while being so happy with their new life is even more suspect. Every couple of days someone posts a blog telling everyone how it really is, but completely overlooking the fact that most of us applying are aware of the dangers of this path, and we need to find out if it is right for us or not, and the blog cannot be our only information in making that decision.

But even those who go to grad school and quit to become happy elsewhere are actually better off for having attended; they discovered it wasn't for them. The people who went and found the whole experience awful and soul-destroying can go on with their lives knowing that academia is not for them, and in fact the trials of a PhD program often makes them realize what really makes them happy and what is truly valuable to them. If nothing else, the attempt helps direct them towards future happiness. The Chef and the girl at the animal shelter both were still improved by the experience, because they were able to figure out what to do with their lives. These kind of blogs overlook this fact. And also want to offer a told-you-so to anyone who fails in grad school, even though the only way to truly know if it fits or if you will be one of the rare successes is to actually try.

No, it's not something to avoid in interviews, but there is, occasionally, the impression that women who show particular interest in teaching over all other aspects of the profession might be happier/more fulfilled/more satisfied/ more useful/ more fill-in-the-blank-with-your-own-qualifier-here if they went into secondary or elementary education.

The key for women interviewing is to present themselves as well-rounded, capable scholars. Emphasize your research and publication interests first, but when the discussion comes around to teaching let them know you're ready, willing and able to do that too, as long as you have ample time for your research.

I think a major fallacy in the profession is to assume that women naturally gravitate towards the teaching side of things; I know plenty of women who would just as soon never see another undergraduate course in their schedule - they teach because they have to in order to do their research. This can be a problem for women who aren't natural-born teachers, once they are in a tenure-track position, because they can have trouble walking the line between being too hard on their students/having too high of expectations (teaching to their personal level rather than to the mid-range in a class of students including both majors and non-majors) and not caring enough about their students to get good evaluations for their teaching. Good teacher training can overcome this, but is hard to come by at the university level - somehow it is just assumed that once you have taken the teaching methods course in your subject, you'll just know how to do it by experience. Academia could do so much better at training professors for classroom experiences. I'm digressing here, though. Back to our original thoughts on women and teaching...

I worked with a young female professor who was a highly gifted teacher. At a conference, I spoke highly of her classes and of some of the experiences I had in them. Afterwards, she thanked me for saying such great things about her teaching, but also said that she would prefer we not spend so much time discussing it with her colleagues. It was apparent she wanted her reputation in the greater scholarly world to hinge on her research and writing, not her teaching. Yet, she also sought nomination for a teaching award, because her university valued that. So, from her perspective, the teaching should not be emphasized over the research and writing, but needs to be good enough to be recognized on a wide scale as being excellent. Talk about difficult goals! How are our colleagues supposed to know what amazing teachers we are if we never discuss the teaching?

It also seems to be a generational thing, in that younger women professors don't seem to want to emphasize the teaching as much, whereas older female professors are pleased to pick up the "Lifetime Achievement in Teaching Excellence" award at conferences. Or, maybe that is just in my field. But I think that older women who are still in the profession have figured out that the teaching really in the end is the most important part - nothing you research and think and write about means anything, if you can't convey it and pass it on to others. That's the whole point of academia, right? Having amazing, innovative, important ideas about the subject you are working in, and conveying those ideas and elaborating on them and passing them along to the next generation who, in turn, will work with them and maybe take them further? Isn't that why we are all applying to work with POIs?

Ultimately, I think you have to be willing to discuss teaching and to have some good ideas about it, especially if you want to stay in the profession - but that you also need to have a solid research program that informs that teaching.

I think it is still a tough high wire for women to navigate, at least here in the States.

The first rule of grad school, nobody cares about you finishing like you do. Don't trust your professor to necessarily have your best interests in mind when it comes to you finishing your program. Also, make sure they don't lose your stuff, and that you follow up on anything important you ask anyone to do. Their priorities are not always the same as yours and a lot of the stuff they "suggest" you do are just suggestions and not required. Make sure though, if you are unclear if something is a suggestion or a requirement that you clarify.

Also, your major professor and committee will make or break your program, choose carefully, it's probably the most important decision you make in grad school.

It's interesting, the programs I know are so not like this. There's almost no intra-departmental competition, and most of us were the "we had no wild days as undergrads" types... But we go out drinking with our bosses/colleagues/visiting lecturers more now than we have at any prior time.

There's always gossip and intrapersonal tensions, but not competition... Our program, and even the other programs at our school are in the "we're all in it together, lean on each other to get through it" grouping... I don't know how you'd make it through grad school without a close network of peers for support. Who better understands the frustrations you're experiencing than those going through it with you?

The posts are fabulous! I'm not sure how things work in Computer Sciences, if you have funding, ect but I would like to add to the list of great advice the following--- no matter how friendly everyone in your department/cohort is.... just because you are 'in' does not always mean the competition is over and there are always 'unfriendly' folks (brought out even more in this economic climate of funding cuts! So- I would suggest new grad students slowly get to know your colleagues and be professional at all times from the moment you step on campus. Friendships take time- to quotePessi a line from the 'Godfather'- " Never let them know what your thinking"!! Sounds pessimistic I know- and I'm an optimist!! But I think its important to remember that people gossip ect- I've heard grad students/faculty taking betting pools on who would be leaving, thrown out ect! Just a reminder to look at this process without rose tinted glasses!!! Do your best work- be professional- make professional connections!! Ie your wild days with colleagues are sadly over!

Grad school is not an "end all, be all". If you find you're not a great fit with your advisor, or you have some difficulty with a grad class, or TAing is eating your life, you have options. You're not going to get booted because everything didn't fall perfectly into place. Even the smartest people in your program feel overworked and second-guess themselves. You can talk things out with your adviser and colleagues to get an idea what your options are; sometimes you'll find better alternatives, other times it's better to just grin and bear it. So remain calm, work through your research and responsibilities as best as you can, and don't think you're trapped. Remember that while your thesis and your work is important, don't let it completely take over your life. There's more to life than grad school, and you just need to keep things in perspective.

I just had to post when I saw so many of you who shared the application process with me! I have largely been absent from this forum due to lack of time in my first semester, but I remember how reliant I was on these forums when I was applying, and have a fondness for those of you who spent lots of time here last year!

My first semester went great as far as enjoying where I am, who I work with, and the friends I've made. Overall I feel incredibly fortunate to be here and be funded, and whenever I think I don't want to be here, I think of how badly I wanted to get in last fall when I was working so hard at applications. The downside was the amount of time I spent studying for my classes, and I'm worried about my grade in one of my classes. After being out of school for over 10 years, and mainly working jobs where I got to be active and in the field, it was a huge adjustment to spend most of my waking hours at a desk studying or working on papers. I keep telling myself it will only get better.

I share the "stupid" feeling that I think is pretty common in grad school, and worry that I'm not cut out for it, but I'm not giving up!

My biggest concern last spring when deciding where to accept was the location of my school, and I am very pleased with the outcome. Although there are very few places to go out socially in the area, my friends and I are always getting together at each others houses to have pot-lucks, cocktail parties, play poker, whatever.

I'm glad to hear that many of you are doing well. And for those who are struggling, I would say just work on changing what you can, and accept the rest. Simple advice, but if you're motivated there's a lot you can change! Good luck!

Deciding where to go and preparing to apply were definitely the most difficult, but for very different reasons. Deciding where to go was agonizing, and for the months between when I decided and when I started I was terrified I had made the wrong decision. Now I know I didn't. Preparing the applications just took so long, and the SOP had to be adapted for each school.

Waiting for replies was not so bad - I didn't expect to get in anywhere, so when I started hearing back from schools with acceptances early, it got even easier.

The rest was easy. I had moved several times a year for over 10 years, so that was nothing.

What wasn't in your ranking was the actual being here and taking classes in things I haven't looked at in over 10 years - that's difficult!

I agree with this, and also try to create a cooperative culture in your cohort. Most of the other members of my cohort are aware of each others projects, and we regularly send each other things we find that may apply to other peoples research. Their is no reason to view them as a group of competitors. You are all there for good reason, and can learn a great deal from each other. Create relationships across fields. I learn a great deal from how Latin Americanists approach their topics and I like to think vice versa. In my first year, this has been the best and most helpful aspect of my program. We even have a shared blog.

Learn to prioritize. There are going to be many demands on your time and you'll have to figure out how to divide it in a sensible way.
Decide which of the tasks you have to do are important (your research, your LIFE), which you can just do a mediocre job on and get away with it (classwork, etc), and which ones you just have to say NO to.

BTW, saying 'no' is another important skill to learn..

A tip for finding interesting research questions that are feasible:

Read recent papers and find some that interest you. Then, closely reread the "discussion" sections of those, where the authors talk about the limitations of their research and potential future directions for this line of research. You can come up with solid interesting topics that way. You can also look for limitations of their research that they DON'T discuss, and pick a topic that would address those.

Just make sure that nobody already took your idea. The first time I came up with my own research topic with no help from a prof or other research supervisor (using the method described above), I discovered after a month of good work on the topic that somebody had beaten me to it. I actually managed to get a new topic from applying the above method to the paper that scooped my original topic, and got a well-received conference poster out of it and an A in the class that this was the term project for, but it was a pain having to re-start everything, and if I'd done a better lit review in the first place I wouldn't have run into the problem.

One good tip I heard was to think of at least one or two interesting things to say in each class. That way you don't end up blabbing endlessly about nothing (my usual prob!) but you also don't seem like a potted plant who never contributes due to intimidation. Just have one or two well-thought out comments--like things that surprised you about the reading, questions you would have for the writer, challenges to the argument, etc.

Good luck to you!

I don't know if you've seen this Open Letter to Graduate Students from The Chronicle of Higher Education, but there is a LOT of advice from all disciplines and levels of graduate student and professors that is very applicable to your situation. To sum up the letter, the following comments, and some great advice I've gotten from a professor lately: You are going to feel like you don't know everything, because you DON'T know everything. That's why you're in graduate school. I won't say there isn't any competition at all in grad school, especially at a "name" school, but at least you beat the application competition to get into an Ivy (congrats!) and they obviously thought enough of you to bring you into the fold. You are part of their chosen group, whether it feels like that or not, and you had some very well-educated professionals with a lot of practice at admissions looking at your stuff and saying "You know what, this student is going to add something to our program."

Right now, especially with your mental and emotional health on the line, it's the time to stop comparing yourself to the other students in your classes and just focus on YOU-- the things that you need and the things that you can control. That includes you forgiving yourself for your shortcomings, when you don't know a particular term or you feel like you aren't engaging in the readings or discussions as thoroughly as your classmates (that's my biggest struggle, personally). It includes you being positive about whatever small things you can do or have going for you, including stuff outside of school. And, speaking of stuff outside of school, it includes you taking some time for yourself away from homework and school. Get some sleep, eat some incredibly healthy and/or delicious food, take a long walk, see a movie-- take two hours to give your brain a rest. Essentially, even if it seems counter-intuitive, take it down a notch. This is your first term, and at this point it looks like you're closer to burning out than flunking out. Breathe.

As to the anxiety and depression, I have a serious history of that myself. I know how crippling it can be. It hasn't hit me yet in grad school (I've been in a remission, you could say), but I know that I'll have to deal with it again sooner or later given an environment that can be so high-pressure. Continue with your counseling and medication, remember to take care of your body and soul before your education. Your health is ten million times more important than a few letters behind your name. You could know all the reading backwards and forward, but it won't help you if you've forgotten to sleep and eat for weeks and you're a bundle of nerves just ready to shatter.

Try to make contact with your professors and advisor(s) to apprise them of the situation and some of your specific worries about material, if there's something in particular that you can verbalize and focus on during the appointment. Don't let yourself get isolated out of fear or dread. Please never forget to reach out if you need help.