anyone on here take the GRE's?

[content]

I want to go to Grad school but my grades in college weren't real great. so i figure I have to ace these things. could use some tips and stuff

[Orang Utan]

Wossa GRE?

[Eva]

lol I instantly had the same thought!

[content]

some kind of grad entrance exam

test your ability to learn

[Orang Utan]

Woss grad school?

[content]

above undergrad

[Orang Utan]

Post graduate you mean?
I'm confused - all unis I know do MAs, MScs etc - there's not a seperate 'school' for postgraduates.

[content]

there three levels of school.
undergrad which is teh first 4 yrs of college.
then graduate which is two more years, further ed. needed to become a prof and stuff. then the doctorate which is hard.

[_JM]

I just took the GRE last week.

None of the math in the quantitative section is difficult. The hard part is finishing in time. You only have about 90 seconds per problem and it's easy to fall behind if you freeze up on a difficult one.

The verbal section is mostly about vocabulary. I'm not convinced that there's a good way to study for this - I went over a few word lists, and there was nothing I learned from the lists that showed up on the tests.

I ended up with a 730/740 Q/V, I haven't gotten my essay scores back yet.

[Orang Utan]

You guys must be seppos with your weird education talk
In the UK:
3 years for a bachelor degree
1-2 years for a master
Then however long it takes for a doctorate.
Professors are defined differently as well - they have to be appointed by their faculty or something, usually quite late in their careers

[bitch one]

i got the impression that a bachelors degree in the states is kind of lower than ours, so they HAVE to do a masters to convert it into something decent. their masters is like our honours

[content]

Originally posted by _JM
I just took the GRE last week.

None of the math in the quantitative section is difficult. The hard part is finishing in time. You only have about 90 seconds per problem and it's easy to fall behind if you freeze up on a difficult one.

The verbal section is mostly about vocabulary. I'm not convinced that there's a good way to study for this - I went over a few word lists, and there was nothing I learned from the lists that showed up on the tests.

I ended up with a 730/740 Q/V, I haven't gotten my essay scores back yet.

high score is 800 right?. good job. it sucks i dint do well in college cuz i didnt really care too much at the time so i really have to do good on these

[phonudja]

Originally posted by _JM


The verbal section is mostly about vocabulary. I'm not convinced that there's a good way to study for this - I went over a few word lists, and there was nothing I learned from the lists that showed up on the tests.

That sounds strange.
What kind of 'words' are you asked about? Just in general, whether your vocab includes more than - say - 100'000 items? Or specific terms related to your area of interest?

I'm heading for my final exams at university very soon, but I don't think word lists would help ...

[grobelaar]

Originally posted by phonudja


That sounds strange.
What kind of 'words' are you asked about? Just in general, whether your vocab includes more than - say - 100'000 items? Or specific terms related to your area of interest?

I'm heading for my final exams at university very soon, but I don't think word lists would help ...

They are scared that if you don't know the big words - that you might learn all their secrets and then run off into the big wide world and distill them down into a form understandable by normal people and then where would there black arts and overpriced education courses be then?

[Yer_Maw]

is this like an iq test? thats what they go by to let you do 'grad school?' Jesus H christ.

[Orang Utan]

A vocab test sounds like a very flaky way of testing ability - you might know a word but not how to use it well

[phonudja]

Please, American friends, give us a few pointers regarding the nature of this test!

[content]

you people are so cynical. it isnt a vocab test. they don't expect anyoine to memorize 11000 words. it tests your ability to compare words and involves being able to recognize roots and stuff. it isn't the only thing they base grad school on but supposedly it is supposed to test you capacity to learn.

[Lady E]

this sounds weird

i wouldnt be able to pass a maths test without some serious strain.

in fact i have to to become a teacher - they make you do "skills" tests in literacy numeracy and ICT. thankfully i passed the literacy one, would have been embarrassing. the other two are not looking so easy.

thank god all you need to do a masters / phd here is to have a good degree and give a good interview.

[bitch one]

cmon, we are just used to our own system where they test your ability to faithfully memorise text books.

for getting into honours i mean (i don't think an american masters is equiv to a british masters)

[Lady E]

Originally posted by bitch one
cmon, we are just used to our own system where they test your ability to faithfully memorise text books.

??

i don't think i have ever, ever been tested in that way in my whole academic career, neither am i being taught to teach like that.

[bitch one]

you didn't do science tho

hey, i never did that but there were people that did and they got 2:1s

[content]

that is the lower education system here, not so much higher ed. that is why my kid is going to a <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montessori">montessori school</a>

[Lady E]

Originally posted by bitch one
you didn't do science tho

hey, i never did that but there were people that did and they got 2:1s

no, i didn't. fair enough.

[content]

yeah, it is frustrating t hat these idiots who have no mind of there own get 4.0's

[Orang Utan]

I think this thread is going to be another one of those Europe is better than America threads. Whehey.

[content]

I don't think there is anything of the sort here. i dont think anyone has come close to saying anything like that

[bitch one]

not at all. they just have a slightly different system and it's confusing cos they use the same terms - in US you MUST do a masters BEFORE you do a phd, whereas in the UK you you go straight from bachelors to phd.

or you do a masters. there's no need to do a masters first tho.

[Orang Utan]

I know - just joshing

[phonudja]

We've had enough of that I think (the anti-American thing, not the joshing of course - I didn't type fast enough) - so I thought I'd ask for the exact nature of the test before speculation takes the thread beyond repair...

We have similar tests if you want to enter some specific subjects like Medicine who are overrun by students - and I think it's very tough to find a suitable way to judge whether you are good at something when you haven't even started training. Here they give you stuff like pieces of a puzzle that you have to fit together from memory.

That vocab test does make sense - in fact your ability to use words and know their relation to each other could tell a lot about how you interpret the world. Does anyone have an example question from such a GRE vocab test?

[content]

http://www.testprepreview.com/modules/analogies1.htm

[Orang Utan]

Yes, but surely you would have that vocabulary if you've graduated well in your field already?

[content]

analogies and antonyms are the major vocab questions. and some fill in the blanks

[bitch one]

in uk to get into medicine (after getting the grades at high school) you just have to do well at an interview.

[content]

but as I said before, it is not so much just knowing the definitions. I think it is more about how you figure out how the word relates to other words and how the relationship applies to other sets of words

[Orang Utan]

Originally posted by content
http://www.testprepreview.com/modules/analogies1.htm

Had a very quick look and those are the sorts of things a well-educated 16 year old should know already (though I'm not sure if there are any left in Europe or America)

[content]

take it and see what you get. be honest. you have 20 min

[Spandex]

Is there supposed to only be 20 questions? I think there was a Javascript problem so I only got to see the first 20. I got 19 of them anyway :)

[love_tempo]

With regard to PhDs in the UK, these days most people do taught masters first and some even go on to do M.Phils before enrolling in the Phd program.

This is increasingly the case with science in the better universities here.

[Orang Utan]

OK starting it now

[bitch one]

don't you usually do that as part of your phd, lovetempo? or has it changed ? the phd students in my old dept did some of a masters course in their first year, but they didn't have to actually do a masters degree.

maybe it's changing here cos everyone gets a 2:1 now...i remember talking to academic staff who said they had trouble figuring out who was able to do phd's, cos everyone gets 2:1s

[Orang Utan]

18 out of 20 - dunno what this proves though cos I'm not 16 and only a Tutu'd graduate in English Lit

[Yer_Maw]

wellcome trust PHD's are 4 years, but its pretty much a masters in the first year. A lot of places also like for people to spend a year in the department doing the masters, to see what they want to do, who to work with etc. Plus ive seen people who get told to do a masters in a particular area they are not clued up in, when the already have a PHD place. Then theres the obvious economic benifits of forcing someone to fork out some cash for a masters (especially foreign students).

[content]

ok, maybe it is easy. the shit i was looking at in this book was harder tho. it isnt terribly difficult but it has to be done

[bitch one]

yeah thats the way it was in my day yermaw.

the difference in america is you do bachelors degree, that gets you into a masters degree. then you apply for a phd. masters there is kind of like honours here, cos it's when you specialise in one subject only.

[Orang Utan]

Originally posted by content
it isnt terribly difficult but it has to be done
it doesn't seem necessary though

[Virus]

Originally posted by Yer_Maw
wellcome trust PHD's are 4 years, but its pretty much a masters in the first year. A lot of places also like for people to spend a year in the department doing the masters, to see what they want to do, who to work with etc. Plus ive seen people who get told to do a masters in a particular area they are not clued up in, when the already have a PHD place. Then theres the obvious economic benifits of forcing someone to fork out some cash for a masters (especially foreign students).

those wellcome trust PhDs are brilliant. On a three year PhD it is basically accepted that the 1st year is wasted as the student has to learn how function in a lab and/or perform research. Normlly in this time they work out that their supervisors original ideas are rubbish and start over again in the second year from scratch and go on to include little or no 1st year work in the final thesis. this has happended to almost every single person i know who has done a PhD (in science)
as a result our department now preferentially takes on people with a couple of years technician experinece or a masters combined with a strong idea of what they want to look at, i rekon this is a much better system as the final thesis is much more focused and more work gets done in the time.

[decadnids]

Originally posted by Yer_Maw
Then theres the obvious economic benifits of forcing someone to fork out some cash for a masters (especially foreign students).

when i did my masters i got funding from some European Organisation that dishes out money... which was nice, got tuition fees paid, and extra on top for living expenses. - no obligation to work for anyone or anything.

sweet.

[kams]

what did you do your masters in Decadnids?

[decadnids]

i did it in Human Centred Computer Systems.. but i didnt finish it... (long story....)

[bitch one]

Originally posted by Virus

i rekon this is a much better system as the final thesis is much more focused and more work gets done in the time.

yes i agree, the other system really only works for the superfreaks who know exactly what they want to do before they start.

wish i'd been more proactive about what i wanted to do in science, i just kind of let my boss decide for me and he wanted me to count flies forever on a hopeless project. i should have said 'i hate this. please let me do something else'.

i wonder if i could get back in? it would be hard, up against lots of hungry young graduates.

plus, the kind of stuff i'm interested in doesn't get big grants (wellcome trust or mrc). i like evolution experiments, trying to study evolution directly by evolving things on a dish - that's bbsrc type stuff. dunno if i could handle being that skint.

[Virus]

Originally posted by bitch one


yes i agree, the other system really only works for the superfreaks who know exactly what they want to do before they start.

wish i'd been more proactive about what i wanted to do in science, i just kind of let my boss decide for me and he wanted me to count flies forever on a hopeless project. i should have said 'i hate this. please let me do something else'.

i wonder if i could get back in? it would be hard, up against lots of hungry young graduates.

plus, the kind of stuff i'm interested in doesn't get big grants (wellcome trust or mrc). i like evolution experiments, trying to study evolution directly by evolving things on a dish - that's bbsrc type stuff. dunno if i could handle being that skint.

but you have years of research and lab experience. i rekon if you went to some professors and/or deprtments that did similar to the sort of stuff you were interested in with a good idea of what you wanted to do (perhaps a short research propsal) you might be surprised. they may well be prepared to write a grant with you. i know what you mean about the skint bit though.

[Spandex]

Originally posted by Virus
i know what you mean about the skint bit though.

This thread totally sums up why I never finished my PhD.

Never really had any idea what I was doing it on.. (even 2 years in) and got bored of being skint while my mates were all earning real money for the first time... staying at home playing games is ok when there's a few of you.. it's rubbish when everyone else is down the pub. Then my supervisor left to go to Stirling Uni (she was my 2nd supervisor cos my previous one got a job doing the AI for Tombraider II)... and I ended up with a supervisor who wasn't in my field at all (I only met her twice I think). When someone offered me a job I thought "bugger it" and left without finishing it.

Um.. the other reason of course was my own complete lack of self-discipline and motivation :)

It'd be a diffrunt kettle of fish now. But cash would be almost impossible.

[JonnySpeed]

I did an MSc in applied Maths with Computing. Only lectures I've cried after. it was proper hardcore. you needed a 2:1 in a maths or computing subject at fisrt degree and a 2 hour interview. I was lucky cos I got sponsored by my head of year.

don't think that remotely answers your question but its the only experience I've had of post-grad

[Lady E]

ha. ive got a first in english, a masters degree and am training to be an english teacher and i only got 14/20. i did it in about 8 minutes though. i get really impatient with those sorts of things.

[kams]

17/20