kolja00

Terrorism and counterinsurgency, basically security studies stuff.

IR

I've been refreshing my online app status for OSU for like 2 hours haha. Still says 'In Review'.

I think it depends on the dept. Some take the best 20 applicants regardless of subfield and some have quotas for each.

With the diagnostic tool: Verbal -163 (93%) Despite doing really well on the first section I didn’t have any of the highest difficulty questions in the next section? Weird. Only 1 level 5 question in both sections compared to like 10 in math. First Section: 19/20 Second Section: 15/20 Overall: 34/40 Math- 159 (83%) First Section: 18/20 Second Section: 15/20 (5 for 6 on the highest level difficulty questions though!) Overall 33/40

ETS electronically reports the test scores to schools, which makes it weird that it costs 24 bucks for each school. They actually don't send them in the mail from what I hear.

The diversity statement for Berkeley is actually pretty important. The department has to get every applicant approved by the university before giving them an offer. I believe the statement is one of the criteria in deciding that.

In all actuality it isn't that important at all. A ton of schools, including Harvard, don't even want a writing sample. The truth is the seminar papers you do in Undergrad and masters classes are nothing like the research you will be doing in grad school. I'd say the SoP and Rec letters are the most important aspects.

I took mine on 9/6

I just checked my ETS account and my new GRE scores are up from the new test. Percentiles are a bit lower than what was given as my estimate. Verbal Estimate 700 (97)-800(99)--> 163 (93rd percent) Math Estimate: 750 (83)-800 (94) --> 159 (82nd percent) AW: 5.5 (96th percent)

Since percentiles are what matters, why not just have each section scored out of 100 and your score is the percentile you get? ETS is so silly.

I do think it would be interesting if the scores were scaled to intended grad major. That would be a much better way to compare candidates IMO.

I'm not sure if I understand how it is possible to score above a 166 if an 800 is scaled to that? How is it possible to get more points on a test if you already answered every question correctly. Or is it possible to get an 800 by missing a few questions?

So it is no longer possible to get a perfect on the Quant? lol.

From what professors have told me, don't go into the SoP with a whole plan for a dissertation. It comes off as anti-intellectual. Yet at the same time you shouldn't be too general. You should have an idea of what interests you and what you'd like to research and explore going forward.

Schools don't expect you to come in as a complete research beast. Part of grad school is learning that.

I wish ETS would give a more concrete estimate of scores at this point. I'm sure they have more than enough datapoints to give another revised estimate that is much narrower. Waiting another month and a half is gonna suck.

Id assume they are just going to translate the percentile that you scored in to give you an old test score.

Yeah I'd love an answer to this as well. Seems like it would be 20x easier if you could mail forms in.

I started studying last year for the old GRE and never got around to actually taking it, but even just looking through guide books, the old GRE verbal seems a lot harder. The Math is exactly the same.

Yes Manhattan's quant is a lot harder. All the other prep tests I've done gave me a 750-800 range and on Manhattan I average a 710. I got a 750-800 on the actual GRE in the end.

I found that the Manhattan tests were the most similar to what actually is on the GRE. I scored V:700-800 Q:750-800 which is the range of the scores the Manhattan prep gave me.