Char123

I'm looking through every issue prompt to ensure that nothing is completely foreign to me. I came across an issue statement and had some trouble dissecting what it's contending. The issue is: Claim: Researchers should not limit their investigations to only those areas in which they expect to discover something that has an immediate, practical application. Reason: It is impossible to predict the outcome of a line of research with any certainty I understand the claim that "researchers should not only pursue areas that may lead to immediate, practical applications." But the reason part is a bit ambiguous. I don't get how they're even supporting the claim with the reason that "the outcome of research is unpredictable." If I didn't know better, I'd assume they're asserting that "researches should not only pursue areas that may lead to immediate applications BECAUSE the outcome is unpredictable." I really don't see the relevance in the reasoning behind the claim nor can I see this reasoning used for other claims. It just seems the reason in this issue is largely irrelevant. Also, when it gives you a claim and reason and asks you whether you agree/disagree with the claim AND the reason, is it strange/contradictory to disagree with the claim, but agree with the reason? I sometimes find myself disagreeing with the claim, but not the reason.

In my field, I'm accustomed to unindented, skip a line between paragraphs, format. Would they dock me for using this format on the GRE?

Yeah, there should not be spaces before em dashes nor after, but I do disagree that we should avoid GRE words over simpler words. I've been taught to use a few, but nothing in excess as it makes you sound pretentious.

I hear that ETS appreciates sophistication, so I will try to use a few em dashes here and there where it's appropriate. But.... how do you actually type the 'em' dash? The em dash is slightly longer than a normal dash. I can't seem to figure out how to type it on the powerprep software. Unless you're just supposed to use a normal dash? But that makes it look like you're connecting two words.

What is the difference between anticipated results and hypothesis? I thought hypothesis was stating what you think would result, which would make that the same thing as anticipated results?

So, in the verbal grail book, it stated that the "evidence is a fact so it can never be questioned, thus the answer to a weakener question will never question/negate the evidence." If you look at the attached file from a kaplan MST test, you will see that Kaplan contradicts Verbal Grail as Kaplan states that a correct response would either cite an alternative explanation OR DISCREDIT the EXPLANATION GIVEN IN THE PASSAGE. So now I am confused as to which one to follow. What do you guys think?

Wait get in trouble with the proctors? I'm under the impression that they're not really associated with JUST ETS and are proctoring multiple standarized tests at the same time. Would they really care? I probably wouldn't want to do that, mainly because I just want to gtfo the testing center as fast as I can without it hurting my score. I'm sure the test is going to frustrate me so I would rather not stay in there longer than I have to. It's a 4 hr test...ugh

I have yet to take the real test, but from Powerprep II we seem to get a 10minute break in the middle and 1minute breaks between sections. But, can't you just stay on the instructions page (not sure what the correct terminology is, but it's the page right before the first question) without running down your time?

I remembering BS'ing my issue task. In fact, I think all my examples were BS. I chose examples that I know will have very little chance of being refuted. For example, I made up names and associated some great work with them. Both were made up. Just some ideas: If you were to talk about politics and wanted to give a specific example, use some other country and make up the political figure. If you were to talk about cogent writers, make up the name, but it might be better to "recall" a name from the past so that it is even less likely for the reader to pass it off as BS.

I heard the verbal section sucks and is not at all representative of the real test due to the obscure words. What is your take on that?

Doesn't the 21 day thing have to be 2 different months?

You're quite pathetic, aren't you?

I'll let you get your facts straight before I waste anymore time talkkng to you.

I am pretty confident with my quantitative ability, but I would like to get a perfect score. Usually the questions I get wrong are because I am not reading the question carefully or made a stupid mistake, but occasionally I will miss a question because I don't know how to attack the problem or I didn't understand the problem statement. What books out there are good for for GRE Q practice? I would prefer not to waste my time with relatively easy problems, but I also don't want to practice a bunch of extremely difficult problems that are outside of the scope of the test. Somewhere in between would be best. I guess the section I am weakest on is: permutations&combinations, the really tricky ones (e.g., if I have 5 options, but you can only pick 3 and 2 of them can't work together - these are the ones that I have trouble with).

Are GRE Analytical Questions recycled? I remember seeing someone post that a prompt they had on the actual test was one they practiced before.

What does the GRE Analyical primarily emphasize: Your writing skills or coming up with supporting reasoning? Are they looking for test takers who can come up with very good reasons for choosing their side? Or, do they just want to see that you can support your reasoning well? I'll make an example of what I'm trying to say (Note I've made up some extremes to emphasize my question): Let's say the prompt was "The deer population is decreasing substantially Camp Soar. During this decrease, there has been heavy rainfall. Thus, deers population is decreasing substantially to due to rainfall. Agree/Disagree." The "good reason" to disagree might be: There could have been an increase in hunters during that period. A stupid reason could be: It could be snowed a lot during that time period, which could have made deers slip and kill themselves. I know this my "stupid" reason is very extreme, but would they count it against me if I used that reasoning? Or are they looking to see if I can make that reasoning logical?

It's a bunch of ambiguous idiots working at ETS. They don't even attempt to answer your question. Their website states it takes "10 to 15 days to 'send' the scores after the test date." At first, I thought that means my institution will 'receive' the scores within 10-15 days of my test date. I called them and they said you should take it 30 days in advance of any deadlines to allow for shipping time. I think i was done electronically? I called again and the lady just repeated the FAQ answer to me over and over again. This was the same shit from me emailing them (copy and pasting FAQ section). You'd think me mentioning that I read the FAQ and wanted clarification would warrant them not to copy and paste the FAQ answer as a response to email mail. Whatever, I'm just gonna take it 30 days in advance. /RANT

Thanks for the suggestion. I am not one to pursue something solely for the purpose of winning an award. Along with the deadline fast approaching and my demanding schedule, it would very difficult for me to find spare time to do that. With that said, mentoring is not something I'm too concerned with, although it would be an interesting experience. I have several other outreach experience that I am highlighting. After reading many essays of successful applicants, I realized it involves a lot of padding, overemphasizing and just generally, telling NSF what they want to hear, but reviewers will never know how genuine these applicants are.

Isn't that better than people saying what they plan on doing to broaden participation etc... It's all words, no action as of yet. And there's no telling if they're actually going to go through with it or that they just BS'ed it to strengthen their essay.

I took leadership in the project as I was the older student. So I guess it is some kind of mentoring and I had to teach her a lot of things. Would that not count?

In one of my projects, my partner was a woman and a minority. What is the best way to say that I worked with a woman who was also a minority? I originally had something like "I had the pleasure of working with an underrepresented woman." But..... That sounds so awkward.

RCs aside, how would you guys compare the difficulty of te practice questions from the two books?i did all the sentence equivalence and text completion questions from verbal grail and almost aced it. There is not a lot of obscure vocab...but it seemed way too easy. On the other hand, I took a look at manhattan questions and the words are much more obscure. I'm even having difficulties with some of the problems under the easy difficulty. I do not notice a huge increase in difficulty in Mahattans easy to hard difficulty levels. Has anyone used both books and have had similar experiences?

Has anyone used http://www.codecoax.com/grerc/? It seems like a bunch of RC questions, although it does lack a couple of GRE question types: select in passage, choose more than one answer

For the research proposal, I am a bit confused with what they want. Are you supposed to describe your experimental setup?

From reading past essays, it seems that many stated they want to be professors. Do the reviewers favor applicants with a desire to stay in academia? Academia is certainly an option for me, but I have other options open such as national labs, industry, etc...