zhukora

I can't speak broadly about this, but in my own personal experience talking with close friends of mine who were graduates of an engineering college, a lot of them didn't do as well as they had hoped--but not because they didn't know the math, or because they were insufficiently prepared for the test. The problem for them was that the math in the Quant section was stuff they had learned long ago in high school, and they had spent their college years doing multi-v calculus, game theory, and lots of other much more advanced concepts. They ended up being so far removed from the basic math on the GRE that they tended to overthink the questions and confuse themselves. That is not to say that your school doesn't teach advanced mathematical concepts, but perhaps just that the emphasis is different--your school may continue to use or focus on some of the more basic concepts even as you advance to higher levels, and U.S. schools may consider that information extraneous to the needs of an engineering or math major and let that set of concepts atrophy. I am very firmly in the social sciences, so I don't really know; just some possibilities.

Haha, thanks. :bows: :wink:

Selection bias (e.g. Berkson's bias)[1] is a distortion of evidence or data that arises from the way that the data are collected. It is sometimes referred to as the selection effect. The term selection bias most often refers to the distortion of a statistical analysis, due to the method of collecting samples. If the selection bias is not taken into account then any conclusions drawn may be wrong. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selection_bias What orangepotato means is that the scores you're describing when you talk about foreign applicants (and, more specifically, people at your institution and in your country) represent a different group of people than the scores that are cited for U.S. applicants, and that while they may be comparable to a degree, they are not directly comparable because of that difference in groups. I don't know anything about average GRE scores in India so I'll have to take your word that virtually everyone aces the Quant section, but the difference comes in when we consider who, exactly, is taking the GRE in India. As you mentioned, it is a huge financial burden for your family for you to apply to schools, and I would imagine a similar situation exists for most other people at your college who are doing the same. This means that only people who have the necessary familial support and personal assets to take the enormous financial and emotional risk of paying for the GRE and applying to American schools will do so. Because there is risk involved (i.e. there's no guarantee that even if you get top scores across the board, a perfect GPA, and shell out tons and tons of money, that you will be admitted anywhere), students who want to apply to U.S. grad programs have to do a careful cost/benefit analysis to determine whether they stand enough of a chance of succeeding to make it worth it to take on the risk. As a result, foreign students who take the GRE and apply to U.S. schools self-select into a pool of people who are the creme de la creme of training, determination, intelligence, access to top quality education, and ability to carry the financial burden. By contrast, taking the GRE and applying for grad school for native U.S. students may still be quite expensive, but as lycoris mentioned, nowhere near the degree it would be for people whose countries' currency can't match up to the American dollar, and involving nowhere near the risk since, it's true, American institutions cater primarily to American students and don't make any secret about the fact that that is who they primarily admit. As such, just about any American with a Bachelor's degree and a little bit of income or savings can opt into the U.S. graduate applicant pool. This means that it's not a very exclusive group (exclusive, yes, very exclusive? probably not), and represents a much wider cross-section of society in terms of educational history, test-specific training, IQ, etc. In this kind of cross section you can reasonably expect to see a much wider range of scores than if you took only the top end of the applicant spectrum. Without examining the factors that go into the average scores that come out of each situation, then yes, it would appear that foreign students might receive a much better education than American students, or are far more intelligent, depending on how you interpret it. In reality, the people who comprise each group being compared are vastly different, and that shouldn't be ignored. This is selection bias.

Selection bias: I do not think it means what you think it means. :roll:

I don't disagree that the test is teachable to a point. It is. But I think there are many other components besides just learning strategy that go into it too, and the weight these components have on a test taker's final score will vary widely from individual to individual--things like time management, ability to keep cool under pressure, familiarity with the material, quickness of recall, etc. If you don't have these things, no matter how much method and strategy you've memorized, it'll only get you so far. Again, I don't know that these things are worthwhile traits for ETS to be measuring for, or for grad schools to be looking for, and I don't know if these skills are even particularly useful outside the standardized test world, but since I'm not on an adcom it's not my place to say. That said, anecdata time! This may only be moderately relevant so make what you will of it. I didn't do any prep for the GRE beyond a few days of reviewing formulas for the quant and pretty much ignoring vocabulary. I've never taken a test prep class, and, at that point, had never learned anything about standardized test methodology, even though I'd taken a fair number of them throughout my public schooling days. I think I would be pretty hard-pressed to top the score I got even if I had taken every prep class available. I later trained to be a teacher for Kaplan GRE prep classes, and interestingly, with only a single exception, none of my fellow trainees had ever taken a test prep class or done much book prepping either. Given that you're required to have a combined score in the 90th percentile or higher to qualify to teach for Kaplan, I do think that makes a statement about...something. Maybe the self-selectivity of people who choose to teach these kinds of classes, maybe something about the local educational demographics, maybe something a little more relevant. Either way, I found that to be some interesting food for thought. A good friend of mine who has taught for Kaplan for close to two years now has made similar observations.

I'm inclined to agree with this. If it were just a case of learning the method, anyone who is qualified enough to consider going to grad school should be trainable enough to learn it. I certainly don't think that the GRE can show as complete a picture of an applicant as something so widely considered "vital" to an application should, but it does appear to show something beyond how well acquainted you are with standardized testing formats. As synthla says, I can't say whether what it shows is worthwhile, but a majority of grad programs seem to think it is and as a lowly applicant I'm not really in a position to argue.

I mostly get spam about enhancing the size of my penis. Which is funny, 'cause like you, I am most decidedly female. I've also gotten a few claiming to tell me how to buy a degree. One of them only had that as the subject line, and the body of the text was about Viagra, but one of them actually had some rather lengthy text inside about how life experience should be enough to qualify you for an advanced degree (in...what?), and that if you had that life experience, you should go ahead and send them your bank account information....

Funny story (and a true one, too!)... I went to the dentist today for my 6 month check-up and while he was poking around in my mouth he asked me if I was under any stress lately. Turns out I was starting to get a canker sore on part of my gums and he was convinced it was because of stress and not being sick or anything else. I told him about how stressful it is to wait to hear back from grad schools, and he proceeded to lecture me on how I should just "chill out" because there's nothing I can do about it now, and that my "ulcerative gingivitis" would go away after I stopped being stressed. So it looks like the stress of waaaiiitiinng really can harm your oral health. Watch out, kids! :twisted:

I contacted the very top professor I wanted to work with (I didn't apply to many schools), but I never heard back from her. I was a little disappointed, but I did discover later from RateMyProfessors that she is generally considered very disorganized. I'm not sure that's a good thing, but it would explain why I never heard back. :roll:

It will vary from school to school, of course, but most likely you will be notified about financial issues later. Given the current status of the economy, a lot of public schools in particular aren't certain yet how much money they will have going into the next academic year, so while they may have issued funding to the top two or three admits if they know they have the money for that already in the bag, they may be waiting on offering funding to the next highest ranked group until they know where that funding will come from. There's also the issue of a lot of funding coming from a central pool for the whole university that will be disbursed among the highest-ranked of everybody's admits, so they have to wait until every single department finishes recruiting before they figure out who gets the money and then send out notification. I'd say you've got anywhere from a couple of weeks to a couple of months before the window for financial aid notifications starts closing. Don't worry yet, schools try really hard to fund their grad students, so give them some time to try to put something together for you.

Aaaughhh! Why must you tell me this? Now I'm going to have to compulsively check my email inbox at least twice as often.

Not true. I'm sure it varies significantly based on location (i.e. cost of living) and field, but I have had to process a lot of UC faculty salary data for a couple of more technically-based departments at the university I work for, and in my departments, not even the most junior of faculty made less than 80k. Granted this is for technical departments rather than humanities or social science (where I'd be shocked if it wasn't much, much lower), and the university where I am is in a pretty high-rent area. Some of the most prestigious bow-deeply-and-kiss-their-hem faculty make up around 200k, but there are maybe three of those between the two departments whose data I've handled. Most seemed to top out around 100-125k by the time they reached tenure. Also not true. If you were a senior administrator (and there are precious few of those), you might break six figures, but about half of the staff I know have been working for the UCs in some capacity or other since graduating from college (or high school) themselves, and even the ones who are looking at retirement in perhaps 10 years have never seen, and will never see, a six-figure salary. That said, the staff benefits (health, etc) are freakin' awesome. So that does make up for it to a decent degree.

I'd put it between $450 and $500 for me--that would be 2 schools with completed applications, and one aborted application because I realized partway through the process that it wasn't right for me. ETS and applications fees (oh holy moly application fees!) are by far the biggest drain of the bunch. I'm suuuuuper glad that my tiny teeny little undergrad institution lets alums have as many transcripts as they want for one low price of $0.00. Especially since I had to order two sets after the first set mysteriously vanished. I may rack up more cost as I (*crosses fingers*) potentially get invited for interviews/recruitment weekends, but if I even make it that far, it'll be worth it.

My personal favorite: http://www.coffeebreakarcade.com An EPIC compendium of just about every mindless online game ever (with obvious exceptions like those privately produced and copyrighted, like everything at http://www.orisinal.com).

Oh Noes! I work in a departmental office at a big university, and I just realized I answer all my calls with "Hello"! I guess I'd better go back and check the chapter in the employee handbook where it explains how to psychically discern whether it is a grad applicant on the other end of the line and what their admit status is so I'll know whether to address them with "Hello" or "STOP CALLING ME" or even just "You've got the wrong number, the line for admissions is xxxxx, you should call them instead".