₦airaland Forum

DONPablosugar:
chaiman... i followed your transcipts from the first post with my heart pounding and expecting to see a final score of 380 most especially with the excess marks coming from your prowess with Verbal...

I also hope that the word recondite came out on your actual test day. lol

But, beyond all the joke, I see in you someone very diligent. Someone who is ready to make a lasting name for himself. You know deep inside you that you gave the exam a good shot. The result turned it the way it did. *Do not give up* We have seen worse profiles get funded.

I wish you well. Your experience as shared here would definitely help someone get a better score and with that... guess what .... you'd become a hero.

Yours faithfully... fellow elect-elect engineer. perhaps Greatest Ife too.

Cheers.

Funny guy...Even me was expecting 380 oh...then I remembered GRE ≠ JAMB.

You are right about the profile stuff. Truth be told, after my exam I spent more than a week trying to understand what happened and if it is common. I made a shocking discovery. It is very common. Even on this forum I can list nothing less than 10 individuals who gave GRE their best shot and still didnt perform to their ability, however on the second attempt they all hit 320+ . I was tempted to follow their
path, but replies so far from Grad cordinators made me believe my GRE is good enough and I just have to work on other parts of my application. Thanks for the good wishes.

And I'm glad to hear that we both were baked from same white house Oven

ponpon:
Congrats man!!!! Apply PhD’s and target cities before bushes

Hmmm...thats deep. Can you help me out with some cities?

LagosismyHome:
My background is not engineering so I can't really advice but keep up the effort. I trust it would work out good

Thank you

100kobo:
Here is a brother who knows his onions, who has done his diligence. I tell you, success lurks around.

You have great profile. I am only wondering if you have the resources to apply to all these schools. However, I'll advice you work vigorously behind the scene by engaging your prospective professors in a robust academic chat. Once discussion is fortuitous, you need to apply. This is one way of maximising your scarce resources, so you don't end up 'throwing away' cash.

You've made quite a nice pick. You'll need to strike a balance between your 'very ambitious' and your 'moderate' so you keep your admission chances within the ambit of safety.

Thank you so much 100kobo. I appreciate your contribution. I am still trying to contact grad cordinators of the listed school. As regards the professors, I have some on my list, however I was advised to read their papers atleast before contacting them so basically I have been on that for weeks now. Thanks once more.

Mikkyboy:
Weldone bro.... But with all these long story and prep I was expecting 349.....lolz.... (na play ooo) ....Atleast people can use your write up to practice verbal.... Lolz

But sincerly,nice one... And congrats.
You have to put in your applications early..... I've learnt from here that.... Early birds MIGHT get the juicy corn o.... If you get my drift.

My first paragraph was meant to squelch any high expectations. I'm sure Quoran read into "the primary purpose of the write-up from there", because he knew my final score wasn't stellar even before I concluded my posts.

Sherlock5577:
Great post!!
You went into a lot of details. I sure couldn't get into much details back then because I was destabilized for a long time after I saw my scores. Also, especially because of my goal and extent of preparation. Just like you, when I saw my scores it felt like I was deceived by all the practise tests I took.
It's a good score. You might have to reconsider some schools.
The next best thing to do is contact as many potential supervisors and I strongly believe you'll get some positive responses. It would'nt be easy at first. You'll get a lot of no responses. Then some negative, in between and then some positive ones.

I believe your TOEFL would be much better. In my case the TOEFL was like a "revenge mission".

We would make it.

I would still reiterate on some points made here. Application for fall 19 has begun. Prepare your SOP and if possible draft your LORs and hope your recommenders make use of them as they are, or prepare something close to or better than it.
You should use msinus.com and gradecafe.com to guide you towards the schools you have better chances of being a GA.

Thanks for sharing!!!

We would make it!!!

#Fall 2019!!!

Thank you so much for the Tips. I'm already contacting Grad cord and some current students in the schools I am interested in. I must confess their reply were catalyst to me accepting my scores.

I hope we all get in. #fall 2019

My Final Profile:

Course : Electronic and Electrical Engineering (Bsc)
CGPA. : 4.31/5.00 ( 3.6/4.0 using WES conversion)
GRE. : 313 ( Q161) AWA 3.5
Toefl. : 101 ( R27 L27 S22 W25)

Work experience: 12 months student internship.

I'm looking at PhD in Biomedical Engineering ( funding is very important)

Schools interested in:

Very ambitious:
Northwestern University
Duke University
Purdue University
Pennsylvania State

Ambitious:
University of Iowa
Boston University
University of Buffalo, SUNY
TAMU College Station
University of California, Davis

Moderate:
University of Texas at Dallas
University of Arkansas
Northeastern University
New Jersey Institute of Technology.

I hope to apply to at most 6 schools.

Cc: Drhopeful, Time2Smile, Scholastica16, happyday, texrem, LagosismyHome, iCool, seeker88, Topiipii, ponpon, Qouran, rexCheeng,ChemEngr,femi312, Oludare01,walspring, Yilzid and all the active contributors on this thread.

Please I really do need your suggestions on my choice of school. And suggest possible safe schools for my profile

My Final Profile:

Course : Electronic and Electrical Engineering (Bsc)
CGPA. : 4.31/5.00 ( 3.6/4.0 using WES conversion)
GRE. : 313 ( Q161) AWA 3.5
Toefl. : 101 ( R27 L27 S22 W25)

Work experience: 12 months student internship.

I'm looking at PhD in Biomedical Engineering ( funding is very important)

Schools interested in:

Very ambitious:
Northwestern University
Duke University
Purdue University
Pennsylvania State

Ambitious:
University of Iowa
Boston University
University of Buffalo, SUNY
TAMU College Station
University of California, Davis

Moderate:
University of Texas at Dallas
University of Arkansas
Northeastern University
New Jersey Institute of Technology.

I hope to apply to at most 6 schools.

Cc: Drhopeful, Time2Smile, Scholastica16, happyday, texrem, LagosismyHome, iCool, seeker88, Topiipii, ponpon, Qouran, rexCheeng,ChemEngr,femi312, Oludare01,walspring, Yilzid and all the active contributors on this thread.

Please I really do need your suggestions on my choice of school. And suggest possible safe schools for my profile

As for my Toefl I don't have much to say because I didnt prepare much for it. I prepared for less than 3 days. And all my preps were focused on the speaking section. I used notefull videos and ets official materials for this.

My final score : 101 ( R27 L27 S22 W25)

In my view ( Let me mimic Joseph of notefull small ), even though the notefull videos are quite useful, If you are quite fluid in speaking, then try not to follow those templates to the letter for two reasons.

First, It would fetter your creativity and dynamism. For Example, On my toefl test day (September 15, 2018) I struggled with my speaking on test day because I was trying to stick to templates ( I was sounding like someone that is new to English language).

Second, You would lose touch with timing as you would end up looking at your notes always. To be specific, On my test day I was out of time before rounding up my response in more than 2 occasions, because my eyes were fixated on my notes.

Thats why I think fluid English speakers should try not to follow templates to the letter.

D – Day. ( August 31, 2018)

• Usually, this is where people go on to elaborate at length. However, in my case it would surprise you to know I have little memory of what happened that day. I woke up feeling scared, worried and nervous. All kind of negative emotions one shouldn’t exhibit on test day. I struggled to even eat my breakfast. I figured that reading too many posts about GRE top scorers and having my eyes fixated on top school, plus friends and family high expectation led to the whole negative emotions I exuded.

Fast forward to the start of my test. VQVQV ( I prayed against this )

• AWA
The topics were straight forward and the argument presented had obvious flaws. And even though I am not fast at typing, I was able to come up with 5 paragraphs for each tasks ( my major mistake here was not saving up time to proof read).

Next up was Verbal.
My verbal experience was terrible. I couldn’t just get myself to stay focused. I was just glossing over the screen. I promised myself that on test day that I wouldn’t peep at the options, until I come up with an answer. I couldn’t adher to this. I totally forgot all my practice tests experiences. And I spent 50% of the time looking at the timer (worrying that time wasn’t enough). The comprehension were obviously incomprehensible. At some point I was totally lost in my thought. The TC and SE had not even a single unfamiliar Vocab, but comprehending the sentence was an issue here. At the end of the First verbal I knew I wouldnt do so well in the test.

Quantitative:
Now this section was funny in the sense that the questions were far easier than I had expected but I goofed up. For example, I spent 5 long minutes on question 1 ( if that wasn’t me abandoning 3 months of GRE home training and torrent of advice, I wonder what is) . The most annoying part is that, when my official scores came out, I discovered that even though I ended up answering that Q1 correctly, the victory was in every sense pyrrhic. Q1 difficulty level was 1 – easiest - , 5mins on an easy question. And the summary of what happened in question 1 is that I was being overly fussy. Reason being that, under the first 1mins I had gotten A as the answer (QC). But I wasn’t sure because I used plugging in method. So I spent another 2 mins trying to use algebra to confirm A. after 3mins of struggling I just had to mark and move on. At the end of the Section, I Still had 3 mins left. I still had to waste 2 out of the 3 mins on question 1 and my final answer was still A.

Now, you may be wondering why so much emphasis on Q1. The answer is not far fetch. That single question determined my mood, approach and pace in the whole section and inadvertently led to my score.

The other sections were just complete reiteration of the above. With my last verbal being worst off because of exhaustion. And by the last 10mins of test, my whole mind was on pressing the submit button and knowing my fate.

End of Test: I clicked submit.

Final score : 313 ( Q161 V152)

AWA 3.5 (whatever you do always spare time at the end to proof read and correct errors. you wouldn't want your grader to see " He it a boy". I'm sure that was my case, becuase I was certain about the contents of my essays. I expected 4.5+ self)

I was just there confused on what to do. The institution codes I had taken, hoping they would be moderate schools judging from my practice test scores, are now overly ambitious. So I just left the hall without sending scores to even a single school. Knowing fully well that I have to re-take the test.

It took me days to accept those scores ( or rather to reject those scores as a definition of my ability).

Well, there you have it. My GRE experience. I would have posted sooner, but I clearly wasn’t pleased with my scores initially. But right now I'm super grateful to God I survived, it could have been worse.

I hope prospective test takers learn a thing or two from my experience and I also hope my story end up having a happy ending. The aim is admission and funding and not to enhance your status amongst the Asians.

#Fall 2019 Yes We Can. Peace

Finally, one week to test day. As at this time, I was done with reading all the books I set aside to cover. So I was basically on the look out for questions to practice with.

While on this search, I was fortunate to come across a wonderful fellow on this thread. He gave me access to his Manhattan 6 full length test. I had always wanted to do these tests. Based on my survey online, virtually everyone that did the Manhattan 6 practice test went on to score above what they scored on the Manhattan 6 practice test average ( as it is believed that the Manhattan test is more difficult than the actual GRE esp. the Quant.). So, I needed Manhattan tests to create a benchmark of the worst case scenario on test day.

My Manhattan 6 tests score:

• Manhattan test 1 : 319 (Q162 V157)
• Manhattan test 2 : 322 (Q161 V161)
• Manhattan test 3 : 321 (Q161 V160)
• Manhattan test 4 : 321 (Q161 V160)
• Manhattan test 5 : 319 (Q159 V160)
• Manhattan test 6 : 322 (Q163 V159)

I took this whole tests in a week. Strongly going against the popular advice online of not doing more than a single full length test per week. I did all these under the pretext that I was getting used to pacing. In reality , those 6 tests burned me up. By the time I was done with those 6 difficult tests, I was so exhausted and anxious. The difficulty of Manhattan Quant made me to doubt all my previous test scores. Typically, I used to be the type that would think about the smartest way to approach a questions for atleast 15s before engaging my pen. But due to the difficulty and time consuming nature of manhattan Quant., I abandoned this method and starting engaging my pen more than logic ( a huge mistake on my part).

Two days to D-day, I started going through some AWA questions. Then I took the Princeton online test (advantage of this test is that it grades your AWA).
• Princeton online : 324 ( Q165 V159) AWA 4.5 issue 4 & Arg. 5

A day to my test, I took Powerprep 2. I must say as at this time, I was really getting nervous and slightly worried for no reason whatsoever.
• Powerprep 2 online : 319 (Q162 V157)

I made a lot of silly mistakes. And I realized in the Quant bulk of the 7 questions I got wrong were in Data interpretation. That further confirmed that I was getting nervous as DI question requires focus and attentiveness to details. I just prayed about it and made sure I slept early enough (10pm).

Next….Test day…

Quoran:
Your scores are good, trust me. Congratulations. On the bolded part, learning a lot of vocabs does not improve your score on the new GRE. (The GRE that was introduced from 2011 till date). The test makers claim they are testing a variety of skills of which learning vocabulary is not a key part of it. I agree to a large extent. I think the Manhattan series did not improve your score( in my opinion) because you probably just solved all the questions and went through it. I did the same in my first GRE and scored really poor. When you identity any grey areas in your Math, you find the part of the book(s) that will help you improve. Going through those books is really a tough task and you might even forget many things, as many of what is there do not show up on the test day. Apply the best and apply early. Cheers.

I would really need you suggestion on school selection at the end of my posts. ( I honestly appreciate your input. I have read your invaluable posts from your first test till date and I must confess, it was really worth the time..)

The 3rd phase of my study, to me, is the most productive phase ( From June 20 – August 15 ).

During this time I had access to a lot of great resources and I also decided to eschew every form of laziness and improve on my deficiencies.

I started off with the Verbal Grail : I would highly recommend this material for Reading Comprehension and Critical Reasoning questions. This book really enhance my RC capability. It revealed all the question type and possible wrongs answers format. Caveat: The question are way easier than the actual ETS questions. Just learn the strategies and move on.

Next, I downloaded : New York times, The Economics And Scientific American apps. And made it imperative that I read at least 5 articles daily from these sites.
Then I moved on to Manhattan 5lb. I must say my experience with Manhattan 5lb was exciting. The TC, SE, RC and all the Quantitative Questions were worded in the way I like and low key I was praying it truly mimics the actual ETS question format.

After the finishing Manhattan 5lb from cover to cover. I had temporal access to magoosh account. The magoosh TC and SE were different from what I was used to in the Manhattan 5lb, as Magoosh TC and SE tend to have longer sentences and slightly different structure. I was devastated as I found myself struggling to adapt to this question format. I almost decided to circumvent the magoosh, not until I was apprised online on how the magoosh is the closest to the real deal ( I had to embrace Magoosh fully like my religious book, with Chris Lele my priest ). My comment on the Magoosh is that even though it tries to mimic the actual GRE in structure, I think the sentences are too fluid, smooth and aesthetically organized. It lacks the awkwardness of the actual GRE sentence ( the worst mistake you would make is entering the test hall, expecting to be cosseted by GRE sentences. In clear naija term “GRE sentence no sweet at all” Prepare for it!!)

By the time I was done with all the above. it was August already. Hence I went straight to the official guide. I wouldn’t advise even my worst enemy, to go into the test hall without going through the official guide. Although, the official guide would not offer lucid explanations for most answers, it is still important you get used to the pattern and structures of the questions you would meet on test day.

After/During all the above I did about 14 Practice tests (some Just diagnostic), for conciseness, I would post just 6 major tests.

• McGraw Hill Average ( did all 6 ) : 326 ( Q168 V158)
• Princeton Review Paper 1 (full length): 324 (Q165 V159)
• Princeton Review Paper 1 (full length): 331 (Q169 V162)
• Manhattan 5lb Diagnostic. : 326 (Q170 V156)
• Ets paper test 1 ( full length) : 331 ( Q170 V161)
• Ets paper test 2 (full length) : 325 (Q167 V158)

After these 14 tests, my confidence was well elevated. Because I scored 320+ in all of these tests. My pacing, knowledge and test taking dexterity had improved tremendously and I was at peace with myself, knowing I still have 2 weeks to tidy up loose ends…

To be cont’d

Quoran:
Your scores are good, trust me. Congratulations. On the bolded part, learning a lot of vocabs does not improve your score on the new GRE. (The GRE that was introduced from 2011 till date). The test makers claim they are testing a variety of skills of which learning vocabulary is not a key part of it. I agree to a large extent. I think the Manhattan series did not improve your score( in my opinion) because you probably just solved all the questions and went through it. I did the same in my first GRE and scored really poor. When you identity any grey areas in your Math, you find the part of the book(s) that will help you improve. Going through those books is really a tough task and you might even forget many things, as many of what is there do not show up on the test day. Apply the best and apply early. Cheers.

Thank you so much Quoran. You are right on everything you said. Too bad I found out the hard way.

I started Preparation with the Manhattan 8 series. After, the manhattan 8 series I was pretty comfortable with the quant questions. However, as with all non-ETS materials there is always a heavy emphasis on abstruse Vocabs on their Sentence Equivalence and Text completion questions, rather than actual sentence structure. This posed another problem for me in the verbal, because I haven’t even started tackling my abysmal comprehension, now TC and SE had added to the pile of verbal problems.

I decided to devote at least 2 weeks on learning vocabs alone. Materials used includes: Barron 1100, Manhattan Essential and advance words, Vocabulary.com, Magoosh Flashcards and supplemented all these with Merriam Webster dictionary.

As at mid June, I was well inundated with the torrent of recondite vocabs in my arsenal ( As evident by the constant complaint from my whatsapp contacts). I went straight up to manhattan TC and SE to prove my Vocab adroitness, and as expected every questions were easy. I thought to myself GRE TC and SE done and dusted ( how naïve I was).

So I set forth to take my second practice test. KAPLAN: After another 3+ hrs of hard labour. My score : Q162 V150. Upon seeing this score I was appalled . Not because of the precision or nearness to my powerprep 1 which is also 312, but on how after learning 1500+ new vocabs and finishing Manhattan 8 series my scores did not improve even a bit.
I almost gave up on studying and just take the GRE at the closest possible date, but after reading reviews on Quora on how Kaplan practice test is abnormally difficult and does not really mimic the actual GRE, I dusted myself up and resumed duty…

To be cont’d...

I'm so tempted to begin this post by posting my scores, then go on to explain my preparation and test experience. But that would really belie my ability and the effort invested. So I would use the buttom - up approach in this post.

Although due to my precocious nature, I have been following this thread as far back as 2016 (while I was in 400Level), It was only until May this year that I started my GRE prep.

Adhering to the advice of veterans here, the first thing I did as at May, 2018 was to take powerprep 1. Initially prior to my powerprep. I used to think Verbal was my forte and that Quant would have me struggling for time. Hence it would be difficult to finish. I couldn't have been more wrong. Powerprep 1 obviously disabused me of this notion. As I found myself struggling with those recondite comprehensions (I know I am no doubt a slow reader, as evident by the fact that I rarely read movies prologue half way before it goes off, but I never thought it was this bad).

After about 3hr+ of hard labour, I clicked submit and I saw Q160 V152. I was satisfied with my initial Quant score. But that Verbal Experience was a great shock. I decided on that day, that if I am to have any hope of hitting 320+ on my actual GRE, I really would need to improve on my comprehension reading speed.

So, I started my prep fully . Hoping to prepare for enough time to write my exams by August (3 months prep). Knowing myself well and how I am not well adept to limited time tests. My prep was centered on the 50-50 rule i.e 50% knowledge and 50% pacing ( being confortable with the test) . This strategy would lead me to taking a total of 24 Practice tests ( I know!! Its way too much for a non-Asian, but I needed the surety that comes with being comfortable with your pacing)

To be cont'd.....

shakaz:
August/Sept. GRE is not smiling atall. I'm waiting on my AW before posting mine (I'm guessing that would either add flavour to it or complete the masacre). The summary of mine is, just like black panther "I froze".

In response to this. I got my AWA about 9 days after my GRE. I should have posted here but then TOEFL came up, hence I decided to wait for a complete profile before posting my story.

I just received my Toefl score on the 25th. So I guess I'm ready to give back to the community my little experience on both exams.....to be cont'd

dharmora:
I had BVN Issue

Are you an old awardee?

champeeon:
I've been able to withdraw but that was two weeks ago tho. But I remembered I once went to d bank sometimes last year to link my BVN with DYA acct.

If the problem is from mtn they'll def fix it. At least the money is there in your acct. And if there is an emergency need you can borrow from somewhere else with confidence of paying back.

Thank you for this. Apparently most peeps have collected theirs, judging from the silence here.

champeeon:
If you can't transfer it's likely because you have not uploaded your BVN. you can walk up to any Diamond bank to do that and it's easier to collect your money once from Diamond bank. It will take you just fee minutes.

have you been able to withdraw? A friend just told me even bank told him the problem is from MTN.

DaveJakes:
Lagos zone has paid dis afternun.

I just saw it now. ...thanks for the news.

You guys want to protest on transfer issue? When alot of peeps are yet to see a kobo from them.

kam13:
hello Fam. when do you think viewing of uploaded names will commence? any idea?

it has. Got a link already.

champeeon:
They'll surely pay the rest. I guess it's batch by batch.

Did you fill the indemnity form?

Spotlighte:
People have been giving the GRE and TOEFL, yet no transcripts. What's happening dear family?

Please help us by posting your transcripts so that we who haven't given them can learn through your experiences. It also keeps the thread alive. Thank you.

August/Sept. GRE is not smiling atall. I'm waiting on my AW before posting mine (I'm guessing that would either add flavour to it or complete the masacre). The summary of mine is, just like black panther "I froze".

ponpon:
pm I’ll link you to a group on what’s app that’ll give you for free sir. Patrick.jimoh60@gmail.com

Thanks so much @Ponpon I just sent you a PM . Anticipating your reply.

jamanuka:
Send me a PM

I just did but incase you have not seen it. here is my mail Shambakaz@gmail.com

jamanuka:
Mostly Manhattan materials, Magoosh and gmatclub.com

Congratulations Jamanuka. I would like to enquire if the manhattan 6 test you purchased is still active. My test is in few days time and I would need full length test to practice. I don't mind paying for it.

Tomiwaa:
Shakaz please any materials can be shared here. That is why we have this platform here and not on whatsapp. Let's not spam this thread with phone numbers..

Y'all can edit out your numbers.

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/0B-ii97JplpxMdzhHNnYxSUlPOEE


That's the link

omofola93:
.Thank you, you can send it to my mail. Omofolarx@gmail.com.

sent

Tforbes:
Please who knows any educational centre or tutors in abuja that can help with registration and coaching for gre and toefl exams.thanks

I do.

omofola93:
Hi, I have a magoosh premium account that's expiring soon and i haven't covered all the topics yet. Can anyone give me a guide on how to download the videos?

I have a link with all the videos on google doc. If you are interested drop your contact and I would share you the link on whatsapp.