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Tomorrow I am going the last exam I need to apply for PhDs in the US, the infamous GRE.
I already took the IELTS (8/9) and the TOEFL (107/120) so I can already hear you ask: what are you scared of? A lot of stuff, actually.
Text comprehension (reading, verbal reasoning or whatever) is ok, I usually score 38-40 which lands me in the 160s. Writing too should be quite ok, not excellent but good (i scored 25/30 on the TOEFL and 7/8 on the IELTS).
However, MATH. You can't even understand how bad I am at it. My average during 5 years of high school has always been around 2.1 (on a scale of 1 to 10!), always on a fine balance to get to the following year.
Anyway, I will apply for a PhD in Philosophy, therefore I hope the math part will have little influence on my overall application. I studied like crazy these past weeks and at first I used to score like 5/50 in math, maybe 10 if I was superlucky. Now I am confident I can achieve around 30/50, which would correspond to around 150/170.
Well, what can I say...I just have to do my best and keep my fingers crossed. I really want to win a phd position 
 
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Cayman Islands24199 Posts
good luck. also make sure you got an a in real analysis
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you dont need to take real analysis for philosophy...
time yourself well on the test.
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The GRE is basically the SAT (American high school standardized test) on steroids. It's not really bad, although the logic section is really really cool in my opinion (and probably a lot more relevant to your interest in Philosophy than math is). Good luck!
On December 17 2014 23:38 oneofthem wrote:
good luck. also make sure you got an a in real analysis
lol it sounds like he's taking the General GRE, not the GRE Math Subject Test. Taking the latter would make no sense, and so he doesn't need anything more than high school math and good problem solving skills.
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Yeah I am taking the general. I'm curious about a thing though - I'm asking this to american native speakers. Do you really know all the words in the exam? I've been studying English since I was 6, lived abroad for a while and consider my English very, very good. However, I've NEVER seen certain words. I'll write some examples so that you can answer me:
-pithy
-manacled
-humdrum
-crestfallen
-erstwhile
Never, ever, ever saw them in almost 20 years of English. Meh
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Most "good" language arts/english programs in US high schools will go over British and American lit that include words like the ones you included above. You can literally find every single one of those words in books by Charles Dickens lol. In fact, if you have time, I'd read through Oliver Twist or, in the spirit of the season, A Christmas Carol before your exam, and take note of all of the old-fashioned English words you find. I used to tutor SAT and GRE prep, and I had great success with my "Dickens" approach to vocabulary lol.
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pithy!
i know pithy.
i strive to write pithy code.
manacled and humdrum i've never heard.
crestfallen and esrthwhile i've heard, but i'm not sure about semantic.
after checking:
crestfallen was what i would have guessed,
erstwhile i really had no clue,
manacled and humdrum are excellent words.
oh: and good luck.
and the real number line is a hoax for chumps.
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On December 18 2014 00:34 SoSexy wrote:
Yeah I am taking the general. I'm curious about a thing though - I'm asking this to american native speakers. Do you really know all the words in the exam? I've been studying English since I was 6, lived abroad for a while and consider my English very, very good. However, I've NEVER seen certain words. I'll write some examples so that you can answer me:
-pithy
-manacled
-humdrum
-crestfallen
-erstwhile
Never, ever, ever saw them in almost 20 years of English. Meh
Non-native, have seen all apart from 'pithy', could have given the exact meaning of 'manacled' (I read a lot of Fantasy) and decent approximations for the rest.
If you want to compare your vocabulary to English-speakers: http://testyourvocab.com/
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On December 18 2014 00:34 SoSexy wrote:
Yeah I am taking the general. I'm curious about a thing though - I'm asking this to american native speakers. Do you really know all the words in the exam? I've been studying English since I was 6, lived abroad for a while and consider my English very, very good. However, I've NEVER seen certain words. I'll write some examples so that you can answer me:
-pithy
-manacled
-humdrum
-crestfallen
-erstwhile
Never, ever, ever saw them in almost 20 years of English. Meh
I've seen all of them, but the GRE vocabulary lists are often a thousand or so words long, so it's almost impossible to memorize everything (and particularly annoying that you won't see 80+% of the words on the GRE anyway).
I've tutored the GRE for the past few years, but primarily the math and logic/ reasoning parts, not the verbal section.
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Ok, I've got 159 in verbal and 150 in math. Writing went good imo but I will know that only in 10 days. I'm kinda satisfied with the result (3 weeks ago I did not know how to resolve first grade equations...). It's not super good but not super bad either Thanks to everyone who replied to this blog!
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Just out of curiosity (being a philosophy PhD student myself): Where do you plan to apply to?
The deadlines are near and some of them already passed, so I guess you are already set on where to apply?
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Yep, in fact I already sent two! My area of interest is philosophy of religion/medieval philosophy/theology:
-Notre-dame, Indiana (best one in the world for philosophy of religion)
-Stanford, california
-Riverside, California
-Purdue, Indiana
-Cambridge, England
-Oxford, England
-King's College (London), England
I don't know if I will add others. I'm super scared that I'll get rejected so I want to send a lot to increase my chances lol
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Î have very little idea about your subjects. The only living philosopher of religion that I know of is Alvin Plantinga, which kinda fits with your description of Notre Dame being the best for that subject. (and maybe Robert Audi if he counts)
All of those are really good and competitive universities. Good luck!
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On December 19 2014 06:32 Prog wrote:
Î have very little idea about your subjects. The only living philosopher of religion that I know of is Alvin Plantinga, which kinda fits with your description of Notre Dame being the best for that subject. (and maybe Robert Audi if he counts)
All of those are really good and competitive universities. Good luck!
Yeah Planting is around there he even replied to the one e-mail I sent him! I've seen professors in Italy not even replying because they are the head of the department of unknown universities...
Anyway, thanks!
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Bad at math and going into philosophy? Must be continental philosophy.
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Trying to dodge the GRE for my Master of Architecture, looks like it is not going to happen =(
edit: I have no issues with text comprehension and the lot but if there are parts that contain creative writing, I'm royally screwed. And math might be an issue for me if it is beyond basic calculus and discrete mathematics. For my profession, simple arithmetic and trigonometry is all we utilize on a daily basis. It's been ages since I completed my calculus courses.
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On December 19 2014 17:16 Disregard wrote:
Trying to dodge the GRE for my Master of Architecture, looks like it is not going to happen =(
edit: I have no issues with text comprehension and the lot but if there are parts that contain creative writing, I'm royally screwed. And math might be an issue for me if it is beyond basic calculus and discrete mathematics. For my profession, simple arithmetic and trigonometry is all we utilize on a daily basis. It's been ages since I completed my calculus courses.
Math is very basic, don't worry. Text comprehension is strange, I'm super good at it (39/40 on the IELTS and 28/30 on the TOEFL) but somehow the GRE's one was incredibly difficult to me.
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EPT
