figuring out schools to apply

[hamlet]

I am an international student. I am new to the forum and I need some help. I am going to apply for a phd program in Literaure, so my questions are:

1. I did my undergrad in my country; and I am doing my masters in the us. my undergrad gpa is 3.2; grad gpa: 4.00 (school is a tier-3 university). I have strong letters, SoP, writing sample; but I havent taken GRE yet, so I am really afraid of it. assume I will get a low score, do I have chance to be admitted by any program in the us as an internaional?

2. I cannot find any back up schools which guarantees funding. Funding is utmost important for me. can you suggest any back up schools?

3. many friends discourage me applying ivy schools since I am not a graduate of a top ranked school. do you thing it does matter which school you are graduated from?

4. I consider schools like Cornell, Brandeis, NYU, UPitt, UMich, WUSTL, and Northeastern for now. any suggestions, advice?

[cheesethunder]

never go in assuming youll geta low score! if you're going for english i heard you just have to do well on the verbal, which i assume you would since you read alot anyways. I got a low gre score and i contacted a prof at cornell and he said they don't have gre cutoffs but want the rest of your application to be strong.

im in the same boat as an international student looking for back up schools, or clinical psyc programs that are easier to get into, apply for scholarships too

[joro]

I'll say this much...don't let your friends discourage you from applying to ivy leagues. I have friends who come from an unranked school, I don't even know if it's even a tier 3 school, that now go to Harvard, Cornell, CMU, etc. You should apply if you have time. Do you really want to think, "What if I applied and they accepted me?".