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The Grand Taco

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Everything posted by The Grand Taco

  1. While some of that advice does seem worrisome, I'd also take any advice I got from Reddit with a grain of salt (no offense to any Redditors!). Does your program have a dedicated visitation weekend where you'd get to meet the other incoming students and current cohort? If so, I'd definitely go and experience firsthand if that's the vibe you really feel there.
  2. For what it's worth, whenever I first sent my GRE scores back in November, the website had said that scores were received. However, now the site says that my scores haven't been received (which is peculiar, as I've already received an admissions offer from them). I think they might have some weird technical issue going on since even though I know they have my scores, the site says otherwise. If you want to make sure though, I don't think it would hurt to call them up tomorrow and check.
  3. I have weaker credentials than the poster above me (GRE 325, and no papers) and I've already received a full-funded Ph.D. offer from UT-Austin. I don't know much about the particular program you've applied for, but it'll be difficult to predict your acceptance odds just based on quantifiable parameters (as evidenced here). I'm especially unversed on how your international stats compare with domestic stats, so I'm unable to comment on that. Do you have research experience/good relationships with your LOR writers/etc.? In any case, best of luck!
  4. Hey guys, I hope your applications are going smoothly! I submitted all of mine at the beginning of the month so that during the holidays I'd be able to relax- however, there is one thing standing in between me and complete tranquility: one letter of recommendation. The guy who I asked to write my letter of recommendation is famous in nanoscience, and I aced a thermodynamics course I took with him. I talked to him fairly often whenever I took his course, so I thought he'd be a good candidate for a letter. However, the one fault of his is that he can be difficult to get a hold of. Despite this, I sent him an email in early November and asked if he'd be willing to write me a letter for graduate school, and he responded quickly saying that he would. Needless to say, after about a month of waiting, I sent him a reminder email about my letters and didn't get a response. I sent him a couple more reminders over the next week and tried to find him at his office, but was unable to solicit a response from him. My first wave of applications was due December 15th, and on about December 11th I still hadn't heard from him. Out of frustration, I frantically contacted my undergraduate adviser and explained the situation. She said that if I still hadn't heard from him in the next couple days, she'd be willing to write me a letter in his place. I sent him one last email, asking him to respond so that I know whether or not I needed to ask for a different recommendation, and he responded to that one saying that they would be done that night. The following morning, he had submitted my recommendation for the NDSEG, but none of the graduate school recommendations. I emailed him again asking for his progress on the grad school recommendations, and he said they would be done the following day. I waited, and he missed the deadline for the December 15th schools. I've sent him a few more emails over the last several days trying to get a hold of him as well tried to call him, but I've failed to get a hold of him. I know he's willing to help me (especially since he submitted the NDSEG recommendation), but I don't know how much more I can take of his sporadic responses, especially since there are deadlines past and deadlines approaching. Do you think it's time for me to give up on this professor and ask for the more reliable one to write my letter on such short notice? Anybody else in the same shoes as me? Sorry about the long post, but I didn't imagine that this would be this frustrating!
  5. Thanks for the quick reply... it only gave me unofficial scores without percentiles when I took the exam, but from a quick google search, the 410 verbal is somewhere between the 35-40 percentile, so not so good.
  6. Took the GRE this morning. Felt like I did really well on the analytical writing part (but we'll see), and got an unofficial math score of 800 (woot!). However, with an all time, abysmally low score of 410 on the Verbal, I didn't really have much reason to rejoice. I'm about to register for the GRE again since I know I can do so much better than that on the verbal, but I was looking for a few pieces of advice. 1) The new GRE is coming in August, and since the format is changing, the antonyms and analogies will be gone (which I think is one of the main reasons for the really low score I made). My experimental section was an example of the new verbal, and to me it was significantly easier than the real version (I'm not sure if they just gave me easy questions because my score was so low, or not ). Not to mention, the 50% deal is really tempting. However, I'm now used to the format of the old GRE and it might be a hassle trying to learn the new format, and with some of the changes made to the math, I don't know if my score would be as outstanding. Any advice on which one you think I should take? 2) I mainly studied for the GRE by taking some practice tests, memorizing ~300 vocab words and becoming familiar with other esoteric ones I came across, and doing lots of practice problems for the antonyms and analogies. However, I don't feel like any level of preparation would have prepared me for some of the words I saw when I test today. That, combined with poor guessing on questions I narrowed to 2-3 choices and me running out of time (had 2 minutes left with 6 questions remaining... 4 of those were reading comprehension questions), netted me a really bad score. I was aiming for a 550, and that will be the score I continue to aim for (or whatever is deemed to be the equivalent on the new GRE if I choose to take that). Anyone have any good preparation tips or inspiration stories on huge improvements? Thanks!
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