Luma

@Gloridae Great Writing and Speaking scores. I also got some great news last Friday, my university will clear me from English Proficiency requirement for TA as the score of 8 will be effective starting from Fall 2011 :D

Just avoid those schools that clearly states an AWA cut off, I recall UMCP and Yale.

Thanks myIELTSteacher for your reply. Well, my IELTS experience was good, it helped me to improve my overall English and now I'm more comfortable with reading research papers :D I'm not planning to retake the IETLS as I'm only concerned about the Speaking part. I'll take the TSE. I'm in the US since the beginning of August and I lived with American family for a few days which helped me to practice speaking more fluently. I don't feel I'll have any problem in clearing the TSE. Best of Luck for all the future IELTS takers ...

@tavani That's true, it's a good score, however the 8 band score to clear the English requirement seems crazy. @Obelixous Best of Luck, hope you'll get the required score.

Hello everybody ... I just checked the British Council online IELTS results service and got my result: Listening: 8.5 (never got that at any practice test) Reading: 8 Writing: 6.5 (disappointed :( ) Speaking: 7 Overall Band: 7.5 Well, here's a debrief, thought it might be useful for somebody although I don't see lots of activity at this subforum ... I wrote my test on July 10th, at the British Council in Jordan (Middle East area for those who didn't hear about it) prepared for about 6 weeks but only got serious at the last 2 weeks. I shall note that I didn't attend any training (although it might be useful specially in Writing and Speaking). I basically have a good command of English (scored 102 in TOEFL last year) and also wrote GRE. For my preparation, I used Cambridge Ielts (1, 5-7), Kaplan (Speaking and Writing) and Target Band 7 (Speaking and Writing). Listening: I used to do one practice test at a day, the key in listening is: Expectation, if you just could predict what are you going to hear next such as: number, address, name, etc. it's going to boost your score. Reading Again, one test per day. Time is crucial in Reading, at my early beginnings I never finished a Reading test on time but I improved my timing by the end. Also, you need to get familiar with question types and learn where to look for answers. For example, in the fill in the blanks questions, you might need to search for answers in 2 consecutive paragraphs so try to visualize the whole passage. Writing I'm not sure whether I'm the right person to give advice here, I thought I could get at least 7. Nevertheless, for writing #1: you need to understand different charts and try to cover almost all the information presented. writing #2: most of the time you'll get an argument topic, just practice on writing within time and try to have your essay proofread. Speaking I feel satisfy about it. I think it's not easy to get the 8 score as it requires not only advanced English but also good amount of knowledge about the topics they throw on you such as: architecture, pollution, recycling, etc. I started preparing by reading the model answers in Kaplan so I realized how much we need to elaborate at our answers. I watched several videos at YouTube, but you need to be careful here don't follow any tip unless the source is trustworthy. I used to record my answers and hear them so I pick on myself and improve them by time. The Examiner was a super nice British lady (they are really trained to smile no matter what) she even crossed her fingers for me :D the first a few questions went well but I stumped on the speech topic (I was asked to talk about a situation that never happened to me :eek:) but I managed to come up with a story :D The third part was difficult, I was lucky to have some background about the topic she asked about. In short, you need to educate yourself about your country in past, current and future in order to get through this part. Paper Based Test I truly despise Paper tests for several reasons: 1. Listening: what if somebody made a noise and I missed hearing the answer?! 2. Reading: I'm waisting time in filling answers on sheet! 3. Writing: I'm way faster in typing than writing. IELTS needs to adopt the Computer Based testing on a wider range. No Break After finishing the Reading section, I was totally exhausted and hoped for a break but couldn't take it as it would be deducted from my time :doh: This is totally stupid ... in TOEFL, we get a 10 min break which is very refreshing after doing 2 sections. Speaking Time Slot I stuck at the British Council for 5 hours waiting for my interview as I come from a different city. We need to be asked about the preferred time slot!! Finally, this score is no use for me ... I needed 8 in order to achieve my goal (get certified in English language at Purdue university so I can apply to Teaching Assistant positions). Although I might be disappointed right now, but at some level, it was a useful experience. I wish you the best ;)

Here I post a great essay written by a girl who scored 6 at AWA. Her screen name was psychicle but we can't find her due to forum outage :( Luckily, I have a copy from it :D The duty of educators is not to determine curriculum. The duty and long-term objective of educators is to equip their students for life beyond formal education. They can do this by demonstrating the relevance of learning to their students' environment, building a strong foundation for success, and equipping them with the passion to learn about the world around them, no matter how rapidly or radically it may change. Students, meanwhile, share equal responsibility. It is their interest in learning that will determine their success, and to ensure that their interests are met, they need to be proactive in managing their education, by sharing their thoughts and passions with the people who can help nurture their interests: their teachers and those in their learning environments. How best does this happen? Deep learning happens when children can see the relevance of what they learn in the classroom to the lives they lead outside of it. By emphasising the relevance of their lessons to real-world experiences, educators can impress upon their students how truly applicable learning can be. Without investing time into discovering children's interests, both at the teacher to student level and at the more macroscopic, generalisable level, i.e., what topics capture the imaginations of students of a particular age, it's possible that educators would miss the opportunity to do so. At the same time, building a strong foundation for future success also means instilling basic skills. Few would argue that educators would do best to set curricula in a vacuum. Meanwhile, exclusively focusing on what children might be interested in would be insufficient to inculcate the basic skills that they will need to function in a rapidly changing and complex world. Educators must spend time discovering what students need and are interested in and then discerning which to incorporate into their curricula and how. That execution is essential. "Drill and kill" is a term that modern educators use to describe the by-rote memorisation that is now popularly believed to dull the natural creativity that children possess, one that should instead be nurtured in productive ways toward learning. Placing empahsis on what children are interested in helps nurture children's curiosity and creativity. Curiosity is a boon to the world of education. It provides a natural segueway to encouraging the passion that they would be best equipped to sustain through their lifetimes, beyond formal education. In summary, I do not believe it is unfortunate that today's educators place so much emphasis on what students want to study. I believe it's essential. They need to do this to ensure their curricula have relevance, can effectively build the right foundations for their students and nurture the passion students need. The education world's latest term of fashion is "21st century learning," which in its very construction supposes that today's learning is different from that of the past. The continual process of discovering what children are now interested in - and inevitably what constitutes the world in which they live - and impressing upon them the relevance, foundation and passion for learning is one that should drive what educators do.

Well, I recall a score of 3 is classified as limited at GRE. I suggest that you double check schools where you intend to apply and avoid those which have a particular cut off. Regard essays that get high scores, there was a girl (her screen name was psychicle) who got 6 at AWA and posted some of her essays. However, you can't find psychicle (due to forum outage) but luckily I have a copy of her essay will post it in the AWA subforum. Best of Luck!

After couple of days an advocate from ETS contacted me and said that nothing was wrong with the test, etc. I still believe somebody missed up and they were covering.

Rankings - Computer Science - Graduate Schools - Education - US News and World Report CMU is now #1

Oh, my thread is back :D Thanks Erin!

That's true. I was just interested to identify professors with potential fund as apparently I'll be joining Purdue- no destination decisions for me :D

My point is: Maryland is close to DC. Note that Database research in UCSB is more about Distributed Databases. Really, I thought fellowship. Which professor?

Cool admits ... I would go to Maryland as it has a higher rank and better location. What kind of fund Purdue has offered you?

void.

@thatsgreat Could you show us your profile?

Waiter

I would go to Princeton. Simply it's hard to survive without guaranteed fund at Stanford :(

Lunch.

forehead :wallbash:

flowers. picked all my weeds but kept the flowers

Hi Erin, Of course I love to have my GRE thread back. Actually I'm very happy that you could find a cached copy- this particular thread has a piece of me, I enjoy reading it from time to time. I shall say the support I received from Test Magic was invaluable. I trust that Test Magic will restore its full spirits in no time.

UIUC already sent too many admissions :(

You may post in the Computer Science Admissions subforum.

I'm glad that Test Magic is back. It was sad to lose part of our history in TM but as you all said: Things just happen (I now can pretend that I never messed my GRE ... twice :D). I'm back with my full posting energy :D

Funded UCSC seems to be more convenient than unfunded Purdue. And as you already know, Purdue didn't offer fund this season so there will be a high competition on RA and TA from other departments.