Hi,
Saw this thread. I'm in the middle (or rather close to the end) of grad school apps and thought i ought 2 reply.
1600 is not all that uncommon among Indians - and among IITians it is even more common. As 4 an 800 in quant - 220 out of arnd 800 applicants for columbia's Eco pgm had that last year!!!
I did hardly any prep for verbal - no word lists 4 me. I booked the GRe and just plain sat on the prep material i'd bought bcoz i just couldn't get around to it! Finally started prep about a week b4 the test and found that the wordlist was too big to mug. And most of the words in the ETS sample test were dicey even if u mug the wordlist (at least that is what i was told). So i just had a week's vacation. Did manage a couple of tests and brushed up on quant. Took the ETS 2nd sample test the day b4 the GRE and ended up with 1520 (of course with an 800 in quant - after all i'm indian
)
The big day i found the quant almost at CAT level - not many sitters. But verbal was just like normal. Loved the essays - good topics both.
Got an 800 in quant (i'm bloody sure i couldn't possibly have got all of 'em right - but that shows an 800 is possible even without 100% accuracy) and a 740 in verbal. When the Analytical Writing score arrived i was i 4 a bit of a shock though. Got a 4.5/6 and a measly 52% for what i considered pretty good essays. I thought a 5.0 was def in the bag. Found from some grad app forms that this is not all that uncommon. AW seems to be everybody's bugbear. A lot of people have had trouble with it. Hopefully that shouldn't hurt ur app.
If u ask me 4 advice, i'd say if u r preparing 4 CAT, don't even bother with prep 4 GRE if ur VA is pretty ok.
Now any more Eco Ph.D applicants here?
Ravi
I'm what I'm.
Linear Mode
