Honest (brutal) opinion needed!

[Azarashi1]

Hi everybody!

I just got my GRE scores and I'd like to have a sincere opinion on it.

First of all, my area of interest is social psychology/cognitive neuroscience (depending on the university I'd be applying for...)

Secondly, you should know that English is not my first language (All of my education was in a non english speaking european country).

Ok, so my GRE scores are: 159 (77th percentile) for Quant, 165 (95th percentile) for Verbal, and 4 (a lowly 49th percentile...I know, apparently I can't write...) for Analitical Writing.

I don't know if it has any kind of relevance, but my TOEFL score is 116 (30 for both listening and reading, 28 for speaking and writing)

I have a very high GPA for my country, but here we don't measure out of 4 (but out of 30) so I don't really know how the conversion would work out, if the admission offices just do a proportion or what...

So... where am I? Do I have any chance of entering a good program?

I know these might seem vague questions, but please understand that in my country we just don't have to deal with things such as standardized testing, so it is really hard for me to understand my scores..

Every help and feedback is very much appreciated and valued!

Thanks a lot in advance!

[aberrant]

Aside from the unknown GPA (you should e-mail the DGS to see how to do the conversion on it), your performance on GRE and TOEFL are competitive. As for evaluating your chances, I don't think anyone can make any guesses without knowing:

1. how well will you write your SOP / PS,

2. how strong will your LOR be, and

3. do you have a lot research experience in your area of interest.

I would say the numbers that you've shown is great, but given that grad school application also consider the 3 categories that I mentioned above, you will have to be your own judge. Assuming your answers for the above are "great", "strong", "a lot", then you are likely to get into somewhere good without a doubt -- assuming that your area of research is big in University A, the PI that you are interested to work with at University B has funding to take you, or, University C has funding in general. (A <> B <> C).

Find programs based on your research interest, and try not to focus on the ranking of the school(s).

[jmbrown88]

Your GRE scores are very good. If your GPA is up to par as well you'll be fine.