kaushik_r

Hi Ramya, Fantastic scores!!!!!!!! Congratulations!!!!!!!!! Kaushik

Hi xaero, Congrats!!! You should consider applying to some of the top 10 univs, b'coz you have a great GPA too... Keep us posted. Kaushik

Thanks creativelives,amruta,Sri,AmigoRo,Erin,synthia,ramya,xaero. Yes, the percentiles seem to have gone crazy recently.As Sri has pointed out, the univs will probably rescale their acceptance scores.So, hopefully there is no reason to worry too much. Kaushik

Hi Sri, Congrats on that marvellous performance!:cool::cool::cool: It's also great that you are helping us all a great deal [^] with all the info and advice that you have been posting. Good luck with all ur future endeavours! Kaushik :)

Spectacular AWA score, that!!Simply outstanding!! Kaushik

Hello everyone, I finally did recieve my essay score yesterday (it was delayed because the printed address was incomplete).I scored 5.0 in the AWA section (better than I thought I would).Really, TM was the main reason why I was able to write my essays as well as I did.:) A big [/size]THANK YOU [/size]to all you TMians who read and critiqued my essays and gave plenty of ideas, comments & advice; and to Erin for setting up this great forum.Meanwhile, I am going around recommending TM to my friends..:cool: BTW, these were the percentile ranks for my scores: V score 750 percentile 99 Q score 800 pecentile 94 (Funny that a perfect score should get a 94-percentile!)? Kaushik

Hi Synthia, Congrats!!That's certainly not a bad score at all.Plus u seem to have done the AWA part really well.And a pretty good TOEFL score too.Way to go!! I think for Engg, the Q is what really matters..But mainly, of course ur aggregate and LOR + SOP...The info I got from my seniors was that a good GRE score helps a lot but it isn't by any means the deciding factor.And Sri has pointed out a lotta other things too..So keep going strong! Meanwhile, take a break - u deserve it! Kaushik

Hi Ramya, At the risk of paraphrasing what everyone else has already said, TRAILBLAZER!!! I bet it'll be quite a while before ur record is broken. So, what r ur future plans? Kaushik

Hi creativelives, Actually I had similar problems with RC. Don't worry, just practice a lot and ur speed will improve. Kaushik

Hello xaero, I sent my scores to Univ of Texas,Arlington, Univ of California, Santa Barbara,Texas A&M university and Univ of Arizona. Like u I have another year to decide... Kaushik

Hi xaero, Well, you have a really good aggregate to go with your scores, so I don't think there should be too many problems with admission in very good univs.BTW, have you decided which univs u r going to apply to and which ones did you send your scores to after the test? Kaushik

Hi creativelives, You are SERIOUSLY preparing.I've never heard of anyone who's prepared 800 flashcards..Way to go! About your questions, I've tried my best.Here goes.. The first 5 questions definitely count a lot.Can push your score up or down rapidly.I made a mistake once on q 6 in a Kaplan test and got 770. I lost 30 bcoz of 1 question, despite getting ALL my other q's correctly. Nope.No RC's in the 1st 10 ques, for that matter. Got 3 RC's in either of my 2 V sections.don't remember the exact lengths..i'd say 3 40-45 's and 3 80-90 's total. 10 min break after AWA before section 2 -could be V or Q I followed Kaplan's advice.tried to answer every ques. Math is easy really, nothing out-of-the-world is ever asked, just plain old stuff like percentages and algebra. No conics for me.Doesn't harm to learn it, though.Any 11th-12th grade math book should more than cover it. Pesonally, I feel your V scores are simply great.Keep doing all those flash cards and other stuff.i'm sure you'll get some super scores. Good luck. Kaushik

Hi xaero, I only read the info at gre.org so I'm expecting my AWA results to come by next week (i.e 2 weeks after the test).Tell you what, the sooner the better b'coz I'm getting more and more tense... So, concentrating on your acads, huh.Nice idea.Apparently, it is important that you have a percentage above around 75. How do your acad records stand as of now? (My sem exams are in a week and I haven't a clue about most of the subjects...) BTW, a clarification.Does the fall sem mean the one starting in Oct or the one in Feb? (I believe getting aid is more difficult in the latter because all funds would have been allocated for the year) Kaushik

Hi synthia, I do have 1 full year to go, so my plans are not really finalised. Basically, I'm looking for admission in a top 30-40 univ in CSE.I need a good AWA score (tension! tension!) and good recos from my profs(Operation Butter-up-the-faculty in full swing).TOEFL should be simpler than GRE, going by what people say.Probably next Feb-Mar as I told you.And I'm probably going to take up the GATE 2004 too, coz I'm free next year and my Dad doesn't like it that way ha! ha! Kaushik

Hi synthia, Looks like you found a fan club!:D But hey, your essays are really good, like Bubble said.:) Keep practising regularly and you'll be able to write the same way in the exam..:cool: BTW, creativelives I'm working on your questions..And no problem, I don't mind being inundated as you put it..:) Bubble, welcome to the forum!:) Kaushik

Hi synthia, TOEFL the day after GRE...:cool: Nice way to celebrate a success..Have another, bigger success!:D Kaushik

Hi xaero, Great score, congrats!:cool: You did the essays well, too.Way to go! The scores are not bad at all, because it's the 800 in Quants that REALLY counts for engineering( i hope so too..;)). TOEFL in 3 weeks...should be a pieca cake after those essays you wrote and posted on TM.. Kaushik p.s. you're right.TM is an absolutely fantastic site and I'm sad that I heard of it just a week before my exams.

Hi Synthia, I haven't applied for TOEFL yet.Since I'm only in the 3rd year of my degree, I'll probably take it next year, around Feb-Mar.:) So, 15 days to go..:cool: How's your prep going? Kaushik

Hi Erin, Thanks for the good wishes!! :) Kaushik

Hi, Thanks a lot. About the difficulty of the sections, it was a bit easier than Powerprep and Kaplan. I tried out 1 Pprep test (Q 770, V 710) and 3 Kaplan tests(Q 770, 760, 760 and V 700,680,680) for practice. Many questions were similar to Pprep and Big Book(I tried about 20 V tests from BB).Don't miss the practice ques. in Pprep. All easy, u just need to keep cool during the exam and not think about anything else. About conics, I didn't get any q's on them.In fact, just before going in, I was trying to read the formulaes for eccentricity and the guy next to me told me not to bother, GRE doesn't ask too much concepts. just give a glance and that should be enough. DI and stats were the only slightly difficult ques.be sure of all your stat concepts like median, sd, variance, mode.also easy, if you know what the formulae are and how to use them. BTW, xaero, is your exam tomorrow? If so, good luck! When r u writing, synthia ? Kaushik p.s. got 2 V sections, no experiental sec.

Hi everyone, Whew, it feels good to have GRE off your shoulders.I did pretty decently - got 800 Q and 750 V. 3 cheers to all the TMians who helped me with their comments & enco. The essays were not so good i'm afraid, especially the issue.I thought I should have added much more.I also ran short on time for the issue. The topics were: Issue : About public figures and their privacy-it's there in the list of topics. Arg : About 2 oyster companies-West Coast oysters and Gulf Coast oysters and some bacteria being found in the oysters; also in the list of args. Overall, it went off easier than I thought it would.esp verbal. Should have concentrated more on AOI while preparing... How much does AWA count for in admission to Computer Science & Computer Engineering degrees? Kaushik

Hi xaero, Thanks for the encouragement. :) I needed that , specially as I have just another 48 hours to go..:o I'll take your advice on the timing aspect. Keep you posted.. Kaushik

Hello xaero, I read your essay after my own attempt.In para 2, you have gone into "loneliness" as it applies to the isolation of a country from the world.I had a comletely different interpretation of the topic(more like your para 3).Tell me if you think this approach makes sense. (As before, I needed more than 45 mins to do this :( - do you manage to complete all your essays within the time limit?) "Both the development of technological tools and the uses to which humanity has put them have created modern civilizations in which loneliness is ever increasing." The author's statement raises the following related questions.Is loneliness increasing in modern civilization?If so, does either the development of technology or the manner of use (or both) contribute to this loneliness? To analyse the rather complex and debatable first question, one must consider the various socio-economic classes of people and their different needs for communication.For example, it is likely that a middle-class government employee has significantly lesser contacts on a daily basis than a city businessman who in turn, may have less contacts than the CEO of a top company.In addition, the personal and psychological makeup of a person is an important factor to be considered.A normally taciturn person is probably not specially loquacious when on the telephone and vice versa. However, technology introduces some other parameters including changes in physical distance of separation.Unquestionably, technology has brought closer people who were geographically far apart.The ubiquitous telephone has enabled real-time communication around the globe where earlier only letters were possible, which took days, even weeks to be delivered. But it is also certain that a degree of physical detachment has come to being acceptable, even normal.Parents today does not miss their sons/daughters so much when they go off to college because they can communicate regularly, by a variety of means provided by technology including e-mail, chatting and the occasional telephone call.On a personal note, when my sister spent four years at college in a different city, the physical distance was almost not felt at all because of the regular e-mails exchanged. The truth, therefore seems to lie somewhere in between - each type of person seems to have been affected to a different degree by technology with respect to his/her detachment from others. To answer the second question, we must keep in mind that change is brought in not by virtue of the mere existence of an alternative, but rather by people's acceptance and indeed, their interpretation of that alternative.Technology may be developed with one purpose in mind and may end up being viewed in a completely different perspective by the users.For example, when electronic mail was developed, it was intended only as a means of remote communication, not as a substitute for telephones, or to save paper, or to enable companies to communicate effectively with their employees.Blaming e-mail for increasing loneliness would be tantamount to ascribing to it, the rise of terrorism; because of the ease with which the terrorists can now communicate with each other for nefarious purposes.Clearly, only the use of technology is culpable, if at all. To conclude, it may not be possible to determine with complete confidence whether citizens of the "global village" are increasingly lonely or not, but the fact remains that their manner of use of technology contributes to this feeling rather than technology itself. Kaushik p.s. I seem to get all my best ideas after 35-40 mins . Perplexing...?

Hello everyone, Here are some classic guy-in-a-bar-with-a-pet jokes: A guy walks into a bar with a dog and tells the bartender "If I can show you a dog that can speak like a human, is my beer on the house?".The bartender agrees, and the guy turns to his dog. "What is the top layer of a house called?" The dog replies "Roof!". "How does sandpaper feel?" The dog replies "Ruff!" "Who is the greatest baseball player of all time?" The dog replies "Ruth!" The bartender kicks them both out of the bar. On the street, the dog looks at the guy and says "Maybe I shoulda said DiMaggio". :D A guy walks into a bar and asks the bartender "If I show you the most amazing thing, do I get a free drink?"The bartender says "Let's see what you've got".The man displays a parrot in a cage and asks it to sing "Happy Birthday to you", which it does.The bartender replies "That's nothing, most parrots can talk".So the guy pulls out a frog from his pocket and it procceds to sing "Twinkle,twinkle little star". The person on the next stool is amazed and offers to buy the frog.The guy replies "You can have him for the price of a drink".The man pays up,takes the frog and leaves.The bartender says "It's none of my business, but you just gave away a fortune".To which the man replies, "Not really, the parrot is also a ventriloquist". :D Kaushik

wow, this site has some really silly software.That last line was supposed to read "..the f a g end of my essay."