VerbalAspirer

Hello all, I am applying for PhD in Computer Engineering this year. My priority is the ranking of the university along with its industry relations. I was advised that applying to coast universities (East or West) is better than applying to midwest universities even if the midwest universities have higher rankings. For this purpose, I am thinking of applying to (Cornell and U of Washington) instead of (Michigan and Illinois). Does anyone know about industry relations of the above mentioned universities? I have decided on the following already: Stanford Berkeley Carnegie Mellon UC San Diego UC Santa Barbara UC Santa Cruz U of Virginia North Carolina State University Still contemplating: Michigan, Illinois, Washington, and Cornell

Congratulations :). I am taking my Toefl on September so I am preparing. Took my first Cambridge test today and scored 27 Reading and 25 Listening. A lot of people say that the real thing is easier, what do you think of that? what scores did you often have when taking practice exams? I am not satisfied with my practice scores, I hope my real ones will be different.

As I mentioned, I havent put on a great effort on the quantitative so I am not the best guy to advise you about it. All what I can say is that it doesnt matter how tough the quantitative is. It was very tough for me and I scored 800. Another recent thread here mentions the same thing. If you are good at maths, hard questions will start to appear from the third or 4th question, and if you keep answering them correctly, they will keep showing up which means that you will be continuously nervous, and doing lots of calculations. You will find yourself having to guess the last 5,6 questions but thats OK because you have been answering a lot of hard questions already.

Hi all, My official score tests appeared online two weeks ago. I assume ETS should also send me a score card by regular postal mail? right? I just havent recieved it yet, so I am wondering if the ETS still provides a score card? or should I apply for it?

I think it is a wise decision to prepare yourself. It just needs commitment. Keep your goals infront of you and it will be your perpetual motive. As for the study materials. CAT Tests: 1- Kaplan Tests 2- powerprep Books: 1- Barrons (doesnt matter the version because I only studied the Barrons 3500 words which are the same in every version) 2- The Big Book for the verbal section 3- Kaplan verbal workbook is nice, but I havent had time to go over it before the real test 4- The 501 series (501 sentence completion) I finished this book, it is awesome 5- There is an antonym software that you can get online that have 1500 antonym questions. I used to do these questions whenever possible. As I mentioned earlier, my basic preparation was verbal related. For the quantitative, a lot of people in here recommends Nova. It is advisable to do the power prep tests as well, and the power prep math questions. usually the Quant section is similiar to the powerprep (in my case, it was way harder but I dont think it is the normal case considering many posts here). Let me know if you have any further questions.

Well, you remind me of myself, and of my condition before the test. I used to have those kind of questions you are having :). Anyway, I dont know if those strange combinations you have mentioned are possible or not. I am sure that when you finish your first three sections (AWA, V, and Q), sth will pop up, it will be either scored or unscored. If it is unscored, you will be explicitly informed (and you will find strange question formats). My advice, just focus on your studying and dont worry too much about this. I understand an extra scored section is unfair and discouraging especially if you have done well in the first section, but it is rare, so dont worry.

The dictionary goes by the name Collins Cobuild dictionary 2001, use this "collins cobuild dictionary 2001" as your search query in google and the website you can get it from appears in the 5th position. I am not sure if I can post a link here. If you can manage to send me your email, I ll definitely send you the link, let me know if you managed to get it. Its size is about 627 MB As for later versions, I remember I once downloaded a very recent version but I didnt like it. The senetence examples was much less than this version of the dictionary. So I recommend using that 2001 version. Good luck :)

there aint no scerets my friend. I started with the AWA, then came the verbal, and then came the quantitative. After which, a large statement appeared on the screen that said: "The next part will be unscored" so I skipped it. If that statement doesnt appear when you are taking the real thing, solve it because you will never know which one is scored and which is not.

Hi comchammuoi, Well, I only prepared for the Analytical section one week before the exam, so dont worry. If you are good at English, intermediate-level English, you will do just fine. For the issue question, choose the issue topic that you are more familiar with. Usually the issue question asks about your perspective of a general statement. You can affirm, deny, or qualify the statement. I PREFER qualifying the statement because usually the statement has good/bad merits, so it is advisable to discuss both the positive and the negative merits of this issue. Of course, you can have a biased perspective which is OK, I was biased too when I answered my question but I pointed out the good merits of the statement and that it really sometimes applies. Have a look at some of the online books, there are many, to get a feeling of how long your reply should be. Practise a couple of times to make sure your typing speed wont be a hurdle. Spend the first 5 minutes planning, just planning on your response on the scratch paper, writing down your examples, etc... Once done, keep your fingers pressing on the keyboard non-stop :), sometimes you will find yourself waiting to formulate your sentence in the best way possible, it is OK, just watch out for the time. The time allowed for the analytical section is more than enough I guess. For the argument section: I love this part :), simply, pretend to be an evil critic. You are asked about how well reasoned someone's argument is. Since we agreed that you should pretend that you are an evil critic. You should criticize or qualify every sentence he makes. it is quite easy by the way. When you criticize/qualify a sentence, give example of some cases when the sentence cant be applied, then move on to the next sentence and so on. Conclude by saying that the argument would be cogent if he stated blah blah blah but he didnt. Again, look at some books to get a feel of how your answer should look like. The Analytical section weight depends on your department, so if it is not very important, you should spend less time on it. As I said, the other parts of the GRE need much more time for preparation :+)) Good luck :)

Well, I think finishing Barron's wordlists alone can at least guarantee you a 500 in the verbal section. Do you really memorize every word in Barron and know how to use the words in context? How many words appeared in your last exam that you didnt know? Reading comprehensions is the toughest thing in the exam, so if it had appeared early in your exam, it might have been the cause for the low score. My advice about RCs is to focus thoroughly on your first two RCs. By the end of my exam, I had two RCs back to back, I read the last one cursorily. (It all depends on your pace and how fast you are) For sentence completion, again I believe that if you have finished your wordlists and understand how the words are used in a sentence. You will have no problem doing them. I think they are the easiest thing in the verbal section. However, I d recomment "501 sentence completion" book from the 501 series. You can find it in "Englishtips" dot org website in the GRE section. very helpful... but again, making sure you know all Barron's words should be your priority. I hope that was helpful. Please dont hesitate to ask any further questions. BTW I didnt do the RCs in the big book, I think it is a waste of time. SCs, Antonyms and analogies are important though.

The intuitive quick way: Plug the points in the drawn-to-scale graph and use your sense of distance to judge, you will quickly eliminate the first 4 answers. you can choose E right away or just plug E as well. it is obvious that the distance from the point to P=3*square diagonal length, while the distance from the point to Q=one square diagonal length. PS: you dont need to compute the diagonal length but it is sqrt(2) anyway good luck

I agree with Riyad. The opposite of Desultory is Deliberate. You should not get confused with "prospective", as it is not related to the root word in any sense. "prospective" is an adjective which means "coming-soon, imminent", think of "prospective students", thats almost in every university website and it talks about the students who are coming soon to the university. Try to learn words in context instead of just learning the meanings of a word.

Hi all, I scored in the 90+ percentile in both verbal and quantitative (q:800 v:700). My question is, is a score of 5.0 in AWA acceptable to top programs for PhDs in computer engineering. I used to think so but my percentile is in the 80+ in the AWA?

Hi all , I took my GRE on July 15th , I am really very happy with my scores. I’d like to thank all the Testmagic forum members for they always were very helpful. I’ll try to give back to the forum by telling my own personal experience. Verbal section: My biggest challenge in the GRE. I am not a native English speaker, but I was in an English school so English is basically my second language .Two years ago when I took my first GRE practice test . The moment I took the verbal section, I was like “Is this English?” I used to random-guess almost all of the verbal questions, my first attempt to tackle the verbal section was too “deceive” myself into believing that the verbal section is not really that important and that it is “impossible” for an international student to score high on this section. These illusions vanished the moment I stumbled upon this forum :) It took some time before I realized that the Barron’s wordlists are the first (and ultimate) tool to tackle the verbal section. The question was how I was going to memorize all these weird words. This differs from one person to another, but the best thing that suited me was to learn the words in context/sentences. For this purpose, I highly recommend the SW dictionary: “Collins COBULID dictionary version 3.1” google the dictionary out and you ’ll find it . The power of this dictionary arises from the fact that it teaches you how the word is used in a context, not just some synonyms of the word. My strategy was as follows: 1- Take four words from each alphabetical letter. 2-Put these words in the above-mentioned dictionary. 3-Copy the words and their definitions from the dictionary and paste them in a separate document, to make my own wordlist. 4-Study the word list. It is very important to revise regularly and to use “google images” frequently in order to associate words with pictures. After finishing the wordlists, you will have achieved two objectives: 1-A drastic increase in your English vocabulary and your English comprehension. 2-A drastic increase in your verbal score. I went from [350,450] to [550,700] Honestly, I was pretty satisfied by the first objective alone regardless of my verbal score on the real GRE test. Quantitative section: Coming from a mathematical background, I didn’t have problems with this part. I barely prepared for it and my scores were pretty consistent. Test day: I was very nervous, The test centre atmosphere was calm but frightening. Before the test, I overheard test takers talking about the fact that is highly improbable to achieve your dream scores the first time you take the test and it was my FIRST ATTEMPT. This, for sure, increased my anxiety . During the test, my nervousness decreased when I was writing the essays. They were pretty easy. I took the 10-min break (I highly recommend that) then I came back to take the verbal section. My heart was pounding during the first five questions but they were pretty easy. My confidence increased, and the verbal part flowed as smoothly as possible. Next came the quantitative part, hard questions started to appear starting the second question and they never stopped appearing. My pace was not as It used to be and I knew I was behind on time. I guessed on the last 5, 6 questions. I was pretty nervous because I thought I’d score about 750 in the quantitative part which means I’d retake the test. I skipped the research part and “yes” when I was prompted to report the scores . The scores appeared and I wanted to kiss the screen for that score :). The thing about quantitative is, it doesn’t matter if you are behind on time or if you think that you are doing badly, just focus on the current question. Again , thank you all guys for your help and good luck :)

Hi, I am willing to apply to ten universities, and I do know it is burdensome to ask a professor to write me TEN recommendation letters. So I was considering the new ETS service "My credentials vault" where a professor writes only one letter and I forward this letter to as much universities as I want. However, none of the universities I am applying to says anything about this service, besides the online system of the universities asks for more than a RL. So I was wondering if someone here has already tried this service? or has any information that he could share? Thanks