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Wait, I'm sorry, I don't follow... did you get a rejection or HM?

I haven't heard back yet (for the predoctoral). The suspense is killing me! So what time did predoctoral rejections come at? Do you think they'll be sent out in batches? Or is it safe to assume if I haven't gotten one yet, I'm in the clear? I haven't heard back absolutely anything yet!!!

Yup, guilty... I caught on to your original post... Besides, when someone says, "please ignore"... Isn't that an invitation to scrutinize the object in question ever more closely? I apologize too! Good luck everyone!

Aw mannn! I'm an alternate! I guess there's still hope. Hopefulgrad2b and gradschoolorbust!: congratulations to both of you! If either of you wants to decline your fellowships, I assure you that the money would go to very good use! (...Not like I would even have a choice in dictating how the alternates list is used... but I can dream, can't I?) I guess Ford decided to notify people sooner than was originally posted on this site. Has anyone heard back about not getting the fellowship yet?

A. An enormity is a certain class of event and a brush is a certain class of applicator. I wish you would receive condign compensation for the enormity of the GRE question you posted! *Whew* Condign adj. Fitting, appropriate and deserved (usually said of punishment). The murderer was condemned to die. Your view of whether this condemnation is condign depends on what you opine of capital punishment. CONDIGN : APPOSITE A. supine : fitting B. recondite : abstruse C. consigned : opposite D. apropos : opportune E. torpid : phlegmatic The poster below me can have chutzpah sometimes, but may or may not have known that the "c" in that awesome adjective is silent.

Thanks GK Chesterton, that's what I intend to do. One of my recipients is a competitive national fellowship program but their deadline is, thankfully, a bit later, so everything should turn out alright in the end! Thanks for your input. Edit: Thanks to all the previous posters, as well, for your help. I'm not freaking out much at all... We'll see how things turn out. If I remember to do so, I may come back and report to you all how things turned out, if anything so that future folks in this situation have yet another outcome to consider.

A. Propitious means likely to result in success while minatory means likely to result in tragedy. Many think of the Ivy League as a coterie of its own, but I’ve personally never been the cliquish type. Coterie n. A clique, an exclusive circle of people with a common purpose High schools nowadays have the most bizarre cliques, like the group of friends who wear fancy fur coats while climbing trees. They call themselves the Coat Tree Coterie. COTERIE A. clique B. reverie C. dysentery D. potlatch E. hoi-polloi The poster below me has no quarter sometimes (and I mean something very different from lacking 25-cent coins once in a while).

Snarky, much? What the OP probably meant was that his or her score was not significantly higher than the departmental minimum and is thus on the low end for his or her purposes (i.e. being a competitive applicant). You probably have enough time to retake the computer-based GRE in early or mid-December, though you might be cutting it somewhat close. If you think you can review enough to raise your scores, then go for it. The Miller Analogies Test is a beast ! I've never taken it but I borrowed a MAT review book from the library to practice analogies for the GRE... Meh. Look into it and see whether you'd be more likely to perform better on the MAT. I'd advise against it unless you feel prepared and confident. The GRE would seem to be the more widely-accepted exam, no? We know your department's minimum score... but what is the score you'd like to achieve to be competitive?

What a creative idea, lol. I'm game! C. Assignation : lover :: tryst : paramour An assignation is a secret meeting between lovers and a tryst is a secret meeting between paramours (which is a synonym for "lovers"). True, lol. My chest and abdomen do happen to be somewhat hirsute. Hirsute adj. hairy George had to buy a hairy suit in order to pull off looking like a hirsute gorilla for Halloween. HIRSUTE A. congenial B. whimsical C. refulgent D. glabrous E. austere The poster below me has at some point in his or her life secretly participated in the production of a samizdat publication.

Actually, if you do that, but all of the other 800 scorers report their official ETS percentiles, you still would be misrepresenting your score relative to all of them. Anyway you slice it, you're still doing something unethical. If it makes you happy, why don't you report your scores the way you see fit with a footnote citing the dictionary's definition of a percentile? And no, I wouldn't resort to such a thing (i.e. reddening your posts). Did it not once cross your mind that there are other members on this site aside from the two of us? I've tried apologizing so that we can be civil and stop hogging up forum space with this pointless argument. Just report exactly what your ETS score report says. Case closed.

Thanks for accepting my apology. That's not what I said, but again, you're quoting me out of context (what else is new?). What I said the last time was that if you add 1% to what it says on the official ETS report, then you would be misrepresenting your information. As trivial as 1% sounds, it does constitute a fair number of test takers you would be claiming to have scored above when, as I said before, they actually scored above you. It might hurt your pride to admit this, but I've been right all along, a fact corroborated by others who interpret this situation the same way I have. I'm not the only one who believes your actions might cause admissions to look at your application with distrust.

I said I was sorry. Can we please just put this behind us and wait for others to offer their advice to you about your question? I stand behind my view. That's how I'll be reporting on my applications. Perhaps others can enlighten us as to how they have or intend to go about reporting their information. GK Chesterton, you're entitled to your views. If my words in any way hurt you, please accept my sincerest apology. I mean it. Let's put this behind us. None of this would keep me from buying you a beer and enjoying your company if we should, perchance find ourselves at the same university. I hope you can find it in yourself to forgive me and say the same.

I apologize if you were offended by my explanation. I assure you, I didn't intend any ill will. However, since you're bringing up irrelevant external posts of mine to color this discussion, I should point out that I simply cannot apologize for your inferiority complex; that's your own problem. (The previous sentence constitutes the only time I have ever been and will ever be "smug" to you...) Back to the question at hand: no one could ever honestly report a "100 percentile" on a grad school application because as I explained before, even if one person got a perfect score and no one else did, the "percent below" is the information provided on their score report (i.e. "99%"). This holds true for all other reported "percent-below" figures. You can't just add 1% for padding (I'm sure it's not your intention but that's what it amounts to, and it's dishonest). Just report exactly what it says on your score report. Applications are usually asking for the "percent below" number that's on your official report (even if it says "percentile"), and cannot realistically expect you to manipulate that data to give them a true "percentile," which I agree with you, is vague. In fact, I'll concede that both of us have been conflating the concept of a "percentile" with the notion of "percent below" which ETS uses in its reports. (I sometimes careless referred to "percent below" as "percentile" in my last post as shorthand) Indeed, it would seem that many applications conflate the two, insofar as they list "percentiles" when they almost always mean "percent below" i.e. "please report the same number you see on your official ETS score report." Besides, they will eventually see your official score report and the discrepancy between your self-report and the real thing might raise more than one eyebrow (even if it's just by 1%). Just report the same number ETS gave you. I'm sure most people on this site would agree that it's the correct thing to do and most people have probably done just that. I haven't taken the GRE yet, but it's what I intend to do, myself. And look, I'm sorry, it wasn't my intention to be all antagonistic. It's clear what you think of Ivy League-educated people. I can't help that. And I'm sorry if I only bolstered your misconceptions about Ivy League folks. From now on, let's be civil to one another. I hope you come out of this realizing that all along I was just trying to answer your question and that perhaps I got carried away rhetorically, but that I didn't intend to be mean. (I only got "mean" in this post when you resorted to painting my character as if you actually knew who I was) No hard feelings, I hope. If anyone else has remarks about this percentiles business, I'm sure the OP would appreciate your input.

I think you're misunderstanding how the percentiles work. When I was in high school, I got an 800 on the SAT II in Spanish and on the score report it showed up as "percentile below: 94" and I was a little puzzled. Then I realized that it must mean a decent handful of people (6% of test takers) were getting perfect scores while 94% of test takers scored below. If it says "percentile below: 80" for your Math score, it means 80% of test takers scored below your score (720). This does not mean you're in the 81st percentile. When it says 99% below, it means 99% of test takers scored below that particular score. It's theoretically impossible to be in the 100th percentile, because even if one single person got an 800 and everyone else scored below, that would mean 99% scored below her/him (and in practice, there's always more than a single 800). Moreover, no one can score 801 while everyone else scores 800 or less (the only way someone could be at the "100th percentile"), because obviously one can't go beyond the max score. The fact that a range of scores is designated "below 99%" means that the test is difficult enough such that 99% of test takers don't score anywhere near the bottom of that range. Rather than break up the scores into statistically insignificant cuts: i.e. 99.05%, 99.34%, 99.61%, 99.83%, etc., ETS just lumps up all those scores under 99%. Based on the percentiles for the Math and Verbal sections of the GRE general test, one can infer that more people get perfect 800s on Math than on Verbal. All of this is to say: when you report, just put exactly what your score report says. Adding even 1% to it is actually making it seem like you did better than you actually did because 1% represents who knows how many hundred or thousands of test takers, all of whom you would be claiming to have done better than, when they actually did better than you. Admittedly, I'm not sure what the size of the overall test taker pool is, but I imagine it's quite large, hence my uncertainty about whether you would be unknowingly cheating out hundreds or thousands of people. My guess would be the latter.

Hey there! I appreciate the reassurances but could someone please give me an estimate as to when I should expect grad programs and fellowships to receive my GRE scores if I take the computer-based version on Nov. 22, 2010? Thanks!

@joeyssance: I just have to say that your mnemonics for "winnow" and "toady" are "risible" (three out of a handful of words I learned thanks to your post)! I'm definitely going to check out the Fiske book you suggested. Thanks for an amusing and helpful post!

Wait, you have the option of not working on it as long as it's identified as the unscored section? I'm testing in 2 weeks. If it's a verbal section, I won't mind too much but if it's a quant section and I can possibly get out of it, I sooo will!

Hey everyone! So I was temporarily living abroad somewhere that only offered the paper-based GRE. I had registered for it and everything but ended up deciding to return to the U.S. sooner than I had originally planned. I canceled that registration and have since signed up to take the computer-based version in the States. I know that this is really risky considering that I'm applying to Ivies and other top 10 programs, but I'll be taking the GRE for the very first time in about two weeks. Most of my deadlines are in late-December and early-January. Since I'm taking the GRE on Nov. 22, when can I expect that my programs will receive the scores? Should I consider the option of self-reporting in case my schools and fellowships aren't apprised of my scores by the deadlines? I'm not freaking out... but maybe I should be? I feel extremely well-prepared (...well, for the Verbal section anyway), so I'm not in the least worried about the fact that I'll probably only get to take it once. I've been consistently getting Verbal scores in the mid-700s and higher on PowerPrep and a plethora of other practice exams. Since I'm applying to Ph.D programs in the humanities, the Verbal section is really the only one that matters. I had a close friend who aced the Verbal and had below a 600 on his Math and he got into 7/8 humanities Ph.D programs, all at Ivies and other selective schools. However, I did apply for some competitive national fellowships so I have to be sure to get something respectable (~600s) on the Math section... Worst case scenario, I have to shell out the money to retake it in early Dec., if anything to boost up the Math a little for the fellowships (but I really don't think it will come to that). Considering that I'll likely only get one shot and that it's so late in the game, am I being too nonchalant here, or am I alright? Warning: The following is slightly sesquipedalian and may contain trace amounts of grandiloquence. It's definitely not my intention to suddenly sour this post; I'm only providing the following background info to contextualize my situation. Consider yourself warned. I graduated summa cum laude from an Ivy in the "HYP trinity" with the same major as what I'm hoping to study in grad school. My thesis, which I will be using for my writing sample, received accolades in my department. My adviser and other professors, well-known scholars with friends at the schools on my list, will be writing coruscating letters of recommendation to support my applications. Furthermore, my alma mater is on my list of grad schools partly because it's one of the top programs in my field, and my professors have made it abundantly clear that they'd be delighted to have me back. They're very confident in me and have reassured me that I'll get into most if not all of the schools on my list. The friend I mentioned earlier who was accepted practically everywhere he applied had a similar background as mine. These are among the reasons why I'm not so worried about taking the GRE only once and so late. I'm posting under another alias here because I'm more or less well-liked on this site under my main username and I didn't want to ruin that with this post... P.S. The poll I made for this thread is mostly for fun (and procrastination). Your actual responses in the thread or via PMs would be greatly appreciated! Thank you all so much in advance!