₦airaland Forum

Oluwaseun67:
Please, I need the phone number of ponpon or B. Y Mafit, I want to register for the GRE.

Google.com.

mfarad:
This part tho.
Trust you're doing great man?

It is crazy this fall. Heavy course load...research and plenty of "group assignments". I can barely catch my breath.

DARKLASER:
Wow, so Sir ponpon na fellow akokaite, well-done sir, your boy just finished last year. I greet you scholastica. Going through your story on this thread from fall 2017 was interesting to say the least. More grace Sir.

Merci.

Hopefully you guys have better stories come "whenever". Cheers.

eastafro:
I'm sorry,do you mean 4 weeks cause I saw here on naira land people getting their visas in two weeks or so. plus it says it takes 3 weeks to process a visa on their website.
and I don't think the visa processing time is a factor in deciding if indeed Canadian visa is difficult to get

Visa for study? Check very well. Even in 2016 the Canadian visa had a one month lag. It is one of the complaints they get and they have such issues because you don't get an immediate interview like the US.

And it is a factor because if you are rejected you will barely have enough time to reapply like it is in the case of the US.

Quoran:
lol @ Prof. Few days in school and I further realised that I know nothing. Send me a PM if it is something really confidential. If you think others here can benefit from it, please , ask it here.

I still feel that way 8 months after and some of my colleagues here are people who Stanford and co rejected. May God be with you. LOL.

Remen:
pls answer anyone. I wanna know d difference btw direct ets registration and that of BYMAFIT and PONPON

They probably won't respond to you because the answer is on this thread. Paying directly to ETS you will pay via a PayPal bank account connected to your main bank who will charge you $205 at the subsisting exchange rate which is like #360-365. Which means you pay $205×360/365 ~ #73.5K

If you pay via BY MAFIT you get charged #50K. They are well-known and are a licenced GRE etc. agency. If you pay via PonPon, you pay #45K. He is a firstclass grad, former Akokaite, currently doing his MSc in the US. A seasoned vet of this thread and one whom all those who have registered through him say he is above-board in his dealings.

It is a function of trust factor and your pocket. You don't get extra marks for using ETS for e.g.

Soluadebayo:
Hello guys, glad to have come across this page, you guys are doing an excellent job.

I'm an undergraduate student, engineering, 400l, hopefully graduating next year. I'm on 4.7+. I'm planning to take GRE Oct, in fact I'm registering with BY Mafit today. But seriously I don't know if I'm taking steps in the right direction, like am I not being too forward? What are your advice people? I'm looking at going for a direct PhD US/Canada.

Register now, and write the GRE when your brain is still hot. I know some schools say they prefer a recent GRE but just see it as a blanket statement. It hardly matters. Starting early will give you an edge over other applicants especially international students. You are not being too forward.

As far as education is concerned and funding, US over Canada.

calculator123:
Thanks for the breakdown..
Man pikin go hold approximately N1.4M for this process be that oh...
Thanks once again

You won't spend the money once plus you factored certain aspects more than once. For e.g, you considered applying for a visa 3 times.

Houston17:
Recently, a friend told me about funding in US university for international students which I was ignorant about, though I have been searching for such for a while now. Missed out on African Institute for Mathematical Science last year, re-applied this year and not gotten any response yet. To cut the long story short, I just need advice on how to go about schools I can pick and some other tangible information that would be beneficial.

CGPA : 4.56/5.0
Degree: BSc
Course: Mathematics
Thesis: Semi-analytic Solution of Magnetohydrodynamic Flow of a Third Grade Fluid through a Porous Medium( My supervisor promised to publish it as a local journal but I doubt if he did cos it's like 2yrs now)
My research interest is Financial Mathematics..
Pls I need help on schools to look out for, when would be advisable to take GRE and all

Cc: time2smile, scholastica16, quoran et al..

It will be advisable to take and ace the GRE.

eastafro:
I'm confused ,you saying us visa is easier to than Canadian study permit ? do you have any data to substantiate this ?
for some reason I thought Canadian study permit was easier and us visa is hard ( relatively ) .
to the contrary ,admission to us schools is easier and Canadian schools are more strict and hard to get into .
just a thought though

Canadian visa takes about 4 months to process of which you are a silent appellant considering you submit documents and wait. In US, in the 4 months wait, you can try and fail say 3 or 4 times. US schools are hard to gain admission into for MSc, PhD and undergraduate programs. M.Eng and professional degrees however are not that difficult owning to relaxed admission policies.

Schrodinger1:
Morning Savants. Good job for keeping this thread alive since 2016. My GRE is in few days time (10). I need advice with regards to reporting scores. The plan is to send scores to good (safe) schools that wont request for hard copy transcripts before deciding one's admission status. Schools that'll make do with soft copy (official) first. Hard copy is around 25k in My school

However, the here's what i've got down.

TAMU College Station
The University of Texas at Austin
USC vertibi
OregonTech.
UMass Lowell
UMaryland College Park..

Erudites in Diaspora, pls help evaluate. @Time2smile,
Happyday, SirRiddy, Ponpon, scholastica16, Qouran & everybody with info.

The first 3 schools are for Petroleum Engineering (M.Sc)
The last 3 are Renewable Energy Engineering Ph.D

B.Sc Elect/Elect (3.38/4.0)WES
National Diploma-Elect/Elect (3.63/4.0)

Thanks.

I will continue to announce the difficulties involved in getting MSc funding. So you might want to be careful when making MSc only apps in that regard. If you are applying for a direct PhD in any school, try as much as you may to communicate with a member of faculty as well.

Generally, your profile is decent but the competition is stiffening. Still dig deeper for moderate schools in your proposed field.

Quoran the legend. You are proof that helping others open doors, opens doors for you in return. The rest of you guys on here should take note and be as considerate as possible when chanced.

I will respond to my mentions soon. Fall semester is running at dizzying speed.

Here to felicitate with Tizentos. I know you'd get fully funded after your first semester or session at worse.

Kudos my G.

jamanuka:
Hi People,

I took my GRE yesterday and it was quite satisfactory. I will share more on my experience and possible tips when I get my official result.

Your posts were key to my success. Let’s jeep sharing for the benefit of others.

Regards,

Did you write the paper based test?

calculator123:
Hello house, i want to ask if anyone can give me a rough estimate of the amount of money one would be spending in the following stages
1. GRE/TOEFL
2. School application fee assuming you are to apply to 5 schools max.
3. WES evaluation
4. Visa application assuming you get interviewed 3 times max
5. SEVIS fee
6. 1-20
7. Flight ticket..
8. Amount you are to have assuming you are fully funded with a T.A or G.A

1. Contact "ponpon". Search for the name as typed on the search bar or look up his previous posts. His rates are cheaper than BY MAFITs.

2. Keep ~ $400

3. I always advise people to bone such schools as the stress is never worth it. But $212.

4. N57, 300 × 3

5. $200-205

6. Free

7. $500-1500 depending on how far off the actual time of travelling you purchase it.

8. Depends on school/state but your TA/GA/RA barely kicks into effect until you actually start and even then your paycheck comes in after the first 2 weeks of working and after every 2 working weeks subsequently. So except someone accommodates you for free till you find your footing, I'd say have ~ $1000+

Yildiz:
Good day. I wasn't able to come back and tell the house how the 2018 admission season ended for you. Well it ended without any admit.

I applied to four schools
Gatech - PhD Electrical Engineering
USC - PhD Electrical Engineering
UTK - PhD Data Science and Engineering
Oregon State - PhD Electrical Engineering (Data Science)

Basically my thought is I have a weak background in Data Science, so the rejects from UTK and Oregon State. A professor from Gatech contacted me and I was overwhelmed, then 5 days later I got a reject from them. For USC I believe the problem is they need hard copy transcript before processing application and I had delay in sending mine. Probably they do first come first serve.

My profile is
B.Eng (Electrical Engineering) 4.26/5.00
M.Sc (Electrical and Electronics) 3.5/4
GRE Q 163
V 159
A 4.0
TOEFL 105
Publication: 5 in Signal and Image processing
Work experience: 4 years in Power industry (Network Planning)


For Fall 2019 I am thinking of applying to labs that use signal processing techniques in power system.


Similarly this is to notify everyone that Fall 2019 application started yesterday for most school.

I looked out for your testimony a lot but I never saw it. I have no doubts things will look up this coming admission. And you are wise to adjust the research area, that could be key. Someone else like you last year, adjusted her research interest to match her background and voila...she had like 4 or 5 fully funded admits. I don't think you need to change anything else as you were getting interviewed. Also, you may need to change some of your school choices.

BTW, by USC do you mean South Carolina or Southern California? If the latter, they accept the pdf copies of transcripts as long as it was "official" and not a student copy.

yemiosinbajo:
Please, how much is GRE fee at the moment? Or should I say which agency registers it for the cheapest amount at this time?

If BY MAFIT are not playing ball..mention Ponpon here..he has better rates and the consensus is he is legit.

mfarad:
Way to go man! Totally understand. Really appreciate your prayers. I've deferred my WVU admission till Fall 2019, and God willing, I'd be applying to at least 2 other schools for Fall 2019... Contemplating retaking the GRE as well (crazy work schedule)... Btw, do you still check your NL mail?

I would console you but I know you don't need it. A few of us on here did not get it on first try but it gets better the next. I assure you.

No, I don't check that NL mail. I have been overwhelmed and I knew it would be hard to not reply after seeing the emails there. Hopefully I will do so soon and apologize to anyone I did not respond to. It is crazy.

pronto543:
Hello friends,

Here is a breakdown of my Powerprep II practice tests:

TEST 1
Verbal 1: 12/20
Verbal 2: 10/20
Quants 1: 19/20
Quants 2: 16/20

V: 153/170
Q: 163/170
COMBINED: 316/340

TEST 2
Verbal 1: 14/20
Verbal 2: 09/20
Quants 1: 18/20
Quants 2: 15/20

V: 157/170
Q: 161/170
COMBINED: 318/340

AVERAGE P1+P2 SCORES: V:155/160; Q:162/170

I need useful suggestions on how to hit 320+ on the D-day (August 6th). I was unable to hit 320 in the Practice Set in the Official set. My combined score was 313. I have reviewed the answers and would do the 2nd practice set tomorrow.

I observed the Powerprep algorithmn for inscrutable particularly for the Quants section. Haven scored 35/40 and 34/40 in the first and second tests respectively, I was expecting a scaled score in the range of 164-166. Please can someone suggest to me the reason for the lower scores on my quants.

From what I've read on Quora, the second Powerprep score mirrors the final score closely while the average of the 2 tests varies from the final scores by +/-3points. Although, these are just postulations as the final hurdle might involve some stroke of luck and confidence on the part of the test-taker.

I eagerly your suggestions and inputs folks!

The diagnostics report always states questions of easy, medium and hard difficulty levels. Based on this, hard questions have a greater weight on the final weighted score. And the 2nd batch of Qs always have more harder questions than the first based on good first performances so that could skew the score favourably if one does well in them. For e.g, scoring 18 in the first and 18 in the second can give one a weighted score of 166-167 in the Q if the hard questions were part of the 18 raw scores got. Whereas someone else can get 20 and 16 (2nd) and get a scaled score of 163-165 because they got only one of the hard questions and flunked the remainder 4. It is a function of getting those difficult questions right summarily.

As per your preparations, you are doing well. Just forget the aspects you always get right and solve more questions related to the areas you seem to make mistakes in. Some people take inventory of their mistakes and if they see that they have missed more than one question on the said topic like "Probability", they go back to solve a ton of questions on the topic just to become more accurate.

eastafro:
ayy scholastica ,what's up man ? you a real G around here man. I really appreciate you man .
actually I'm more interested in Canadian schools , would you happen to have insight on Canadian schools ? maybe you have friends there ?
ayy scholastica ,what's up man ? you a real G around here man. I really appreciate you man .
okay I will try to practice more .
actually I'm more interested in Canadian schools , would you happen to have insight on Canadian schools ? maybe you have friends there?

Canadian schools are great as well. "Cheaper" but with far less chance of funding. Don't know much about them any more because few people I know there did advanced diplomas and got jobs right after.

Cheers.

mfarad:
@Scholastica16 Hey man! Long time no jam. Trust you're doing great?

Long time my good man. I have been doing summer job to earn a little. Barely have time for anything else based on timezone. What is the latest? I prayed for you.

Josonas:
Thanks bro...Pls can u help me with materials to get started? Aanex plus longest time bro@Tunapa.

To get started with?

GRE prep? Search for Time2Smile (as typed) and read through his recent posts. A link on more recent GRE materials should be readily available. Also, mention Quoran here and ask for help.

eastafro:
hey guys! how is it going ?
i took the GRE last year this time around and scored v:153 Q:152 (305 )
life went on and I've registered to take the test again on Oct 09 .
can yall throw your opinion if my score was ever bad for a meng program ? and how do I improve it ? I have about 2 month until the test , I hope its enough time to prepare
thanks in advance ,

Practice. Practice. Practice with pacing yourself and making corrections where necessary.

Your first GRE was good enough to get you into a non-thesis program as those are usually based on your money. But it depends on school. MIT and Stanford for instance may prove resistant. Even TAMU CS but usually most schools are lenient in admitting non-thesis based programs.

Josonas:
Good evening everyone,pls i have a question in regards to research publication,i am a fresh graduate,do i have to publish my project,is it an added advantage in getting a fully funded scholarship? Please i need a guide,i am yet to register though.

It is an added advantage for sure but wetin man go do from Nigeria?

tactmayor:
Hi guys and how are y'all doing.
I am having a little bit of tough time with school selection with MSc in Civil Engineering in view and looking to funding too.
Here is my profile->

GPA- 3.71/4.00
GRE- 309 [158(Q) 151(V)]
Job Experience- 2.5 yrs
3 researches conducted, none published yet.

I have the following list of schools in view after checking their websites-> Purdue Uni, Virginia Tech, Uni of Maryland College Park, Uni of Texas Arlington, Uni of South Florida and North Carolina A&T state Uni.

Your contribution on these schools and other schools I should consider is highly welcomed. Thank you.

No matter the schools you are looking at, try to reach out to faculty in the department especially those with matching research interests. Funding for Masters is a hard sell but not impossible. I will say scatter applications between Masters and PhD if funding is absolutely pertinent and try lower ranking
Schools (second tier) as they are most likely to fund for only masters. So perhaps Ohio University, Norfolk University Virginia, Toledo, Georgia Southern...the list is exhaustive and I don't even know if the afore schools have Civil programs. I know a few MSc only applicants they funded hence why I am mentioning them. Iowa State Uni has funding for Civil too but it might be more competitive than the schools above. You should look it up. All the best.

Ubah1:
Stop saying poo , I have seen full funding from Top school (Over 55k$) rejected by that black American lady at US embassy Lagos. It’s not always about funding. If you are unlucky and couldn’t convince the V.O to his/her satisfaction, you will likely be refused. That doesn’t mean that funding isn’t the easiest way to get your visa as that shows you will go for your studies and not run away to hustle cos of lack of school fees. Funding makes everything easy but always prepare well whenever you are appearing before a V.O.

An example of a super story.

Mans stood there, listening to black american lady (as if a Chinese or European will be working as a VO) then knew that the candidate was going to a top school, fully funded.

The emboldened in your post is essentially what I said, but I understand the need retarrds have to speak out of turn. It is in their DNA.

ghs007:
Full funding does not guarantee a visa but it definitely makes getting one easier. I have heard a consular officer in the Lagos consulate general say it is rare and surprising for someone on a full scholarship to get denied.

This is the summary of my post and I gave an instance where someone with that could be rejected. If they get the vibe that he or she will be prone to erratic behavior or joining some of these extreme radical terrorist groups.

All these super stories of fully funded people who got rejected. You guys must really think these VOs are fools. The simple fact is I genuinely do not believe any transcript with that information because I know the value that is attached to being fully funded.

Are you telling me, the US govt was willing to cough out hundred s of thousands of dollars for a student and another member of the same US govt will reject that person's visa appeal? I can't relate.

Nairaland is a faceless forum and as time has shown, people can type just about anything sometimes to invoke a reaction. Being fully funded, IMHO, is the surest bet of getting a visa. It may not be 100% foolproof but the situations extenuating such a circumstance will have to be something really shocking on the appellants part (like showing sympathy to extremist religious views on the DS160). I will even say 95% of people who are fully funded get their visas...once.

After this, you can now look at the quality of school, financial capacity of sponsor, presentation by the applicant, serendipity etc.

Remen:
I have gone through this thread but i have some questions please. My Gpa is 4.13/5... I have IELTS of band 8. Is there any advantage of Toefl over IELTs. I intend to take GRE.

You don't need the TOEFL since tour IELTS is top percentile. With your GPA you should aim for top GRE scores and with luck you could be fully funded.

Although, TOEFL is preferred in the US, the IELTS is hardly frowned upon when juxtaposed with other aspects of the profile.

orelio:
Hey guys Good Morning.

So I gave Gre a try yesterday. Q162,V152.

Powerprep average :Q168,V152
Kaplan average:Q164,V153
Princeton average:Q164,V156
Magoosh average : Q160, V152

Recommendation
For verbal, although my score wasn't good but I think verbal grail, cracking the gre,magoosh questions and ETS materials should suffice. Don't waste your time cramming too many words, it's a test of structure not grammar.

For Quant; Ets materials,5lb Manhattan, magoosh questions.

Also take as many practice test as you can.

Thought about retaking it tho. I knew I could easily have gotten 166> in the quant if I had managed my time well.. But my verbal has been around 152 even in my practice tests; so except I know a way of improving it significantly(especial those RCs), there is no point retaking it again.

My profile
Mechanical engineering
UG : 3.35/4.0 but my last two years result is 3.57/4.0
No publication
IELTS: 7.0
Gre:314
Experience: 1 year Non engineering experience

Gurus in the house what are my chances for Kansas state university, auburn,Oregon and university of Arkansas.. I'll like to apply to more schools though so I'll appreciate your suggestions.@ponpon, quoran, scholatica16,Mr Riddy....

Congrats. The verbal hardly means much. My Taiwanese colleague had 140 and he got into 2 good ChE programs on a full ride. I may revisit this post to give more tidbits.

Remen:
My bachelors degree was evaluated by WES Canada... Can it be used also in USA or I have to start the whole process again. Please I appreciate your response.

You don't need WES for most US schools. So the WES thing may not be something you want to commit resources to.

MrCuteking:
Please guys I need your help on how to resolve this issue. After writing my GRE exam two weeks ago, I sent my scores to 4 different schools. Unknown to me that I sent it to the wrong schools. Currently, I want to apply in the University of Tulsa but I don’t have any idea on how to go about it cause I already exausted the one I used on the ETS site. Please , my result is still pending on my data base, I dont know if there are other ways of send it to the school. Or do I need to wait for my score to be uploaded?

Yes, contact BY MAFIT or Ponpon. The former charge #8000 per school but I don't know how much the latter charges. The rate was better than the dollar figure stipulated by ETS.