Some advices here please :(

[lokerice]

Hey guys,

Thanks for all of your advices last time. Now I need help from you guys again!

Okay basically I did shit last time for my GRE, and you guys adviced me to retake. Which I did, DID IT JUST TODAY~

Well my scores went up a bit:

A month ago: V 560 Q670

Today: V 570 Q 730

but I screwed my Issue task completely! I was hoping that I could get a 5-6 for my argument to counteract my low Issue score (which I predict gonna be a 1-2) .

I am a Earth science major. Overseas student. Applying for PhD. GPA 3.9. Have some research experiments, did several public seminar and poster presentations. Hopefully might be able to get some good LOR from my professors. I was hoping that I could write a good personal statement, since I got some nice ideas for my PhD (I know they are quite good ideas, coz I got some decent comments from some of the professor I want to apply to: they think my comment is "interest", and said that "You are a strong canditate...and I always like PhD student with good ideas working here....it would be of great interest to have you in my group'' (which I thought was quite nice comment, I guess?)

So my question is, do you guys think that my score is good enough (to make them look at my application) for these schools, or am I aiming too high and living in a dream world:

1. MIT (I know this one is probably a stretch)

2. Columbia

3. UC Irvine (what do you guys think of this school? I know phd is about research and your research advisor, but UCI is not very well known overseas, HOW about in the US?)

4. Dartmouth

Please help me for these qustions, get quite miserable sometimes as an overseas student and dun really know much about the standard here in US...