As of November 13, 2009, approximately 55,600 H-1B cap-subject petitions had been filed. USCIS has approved sufficient H-1B petitions for aliens with advanced degrees to meet the exemption of 20,000 from the fiscal year 2010 cap. Any H-1B petitions filed on behalf of an alien with an advanced degree will now count toward the general H-1B cap of 65,000. USCIS will continue to accept both cap-subject petitions and advanced degree petitions until a sufficient number of H-1B petitions have been received to reach the statutory limits, taking into account the fact that some of these petitions may be denied, revoked, or withdrawn.
It is important to clear the misconception from within. You should have been exposed to English thats good but may not be enough to crack the GRE test. You must know what your current level of skills (Verbal, quantitative and Analytical writing).
You need to find where you stand and prepare your GRE Exam study plan accordingly. Hence, give Practice test. Infact there are Diagnostic Mock GRE tests on websites like Kaplan. Get registered for free and attempt Diagnostic test nnd Diagnose your performance.
Actual – GRE Exam Preparation
Get your resources from 2-3 different good resources. Joining an Coaching center is ok, but not compulsory. There are good resources online. Some of them are below at the end of this writeup.
GRE Practice Exams and Practice
Taking GRE Exam practice tests is the most important step in preparation. Practice and Diagnosis go hand in hand [ How to Improve GRE Exam Score] . Just writing series of mock exams won’t help unless you sit after each exam and diagnose how did you get a question wrong.
You must know your own pitfalls and avoid them in exam. There could be some sections that you do well. You need not worry much about them. Also, there could be questions you think you did well but you get them wrong. This is the point of contemplation. How you fell into the trap for a question? answer yourself.
Day before the Exam
Please note this, Prior to Exam Day:
Prepare well in advance to select your Graduate schools. Remember the correct Details of University,School,Department and Course names.
When you are finished with your exam, GRE test sofware prompts you to select the University, Name, School names (in some cases), Department name and Course name the test centre.
Useful GRE Exam Preparation sites
number2.com – create an account and do practice (only meanings Q’s are unlimited and other Q’s are limited- good to bulid ur vocab and test ur vocab )
gre-verbal.blogspot.com : has a good collection of gre words aggregated monthly..they say these are Q’s from exam for that month… I have not verified the claim. they are pretty useful
visualthesaurus.com : its the website . Its gives a good visual experience relating a jargon of words differentiating its shades.. you got to register here to use it fully, although a trail is available for limited use.
dictionary.reference.com : this was my dark horse. I used this for looking up every new word along with synonyms and antonyms..It also gives the words usage and history.
syvum.com/gre : instant test and results on set of 10 Q’s
800score.com/gre-index.html : i dont remeber if this was a paid site..just explore this as well.
freshersworld.com : it has GRE preparations material
koolkareers.com/gre : it also has GRE preparation material
If you have any comments and questions, leave a comment to this article. Sameer is going to write series of articles about this experience.
If you like the article, Re-Tweet this article by clicking on the Green Re-Tweet button on the right side.
Guest Article By – Sameer, I’m doing Master’s student in Cleveland state univ. I have completed Bachelors in Computers from Osmania and 3 years with Infosys. Back then, when i was applying to schools I found the blog very informative and I would like to share my experience to other Happy Schools Blog Readers
And sir as per my information outstation tuition can be converted into instate tuition.Am i right,sir?
Moreover,i was informed that professor will pay our tuition which will not accounted towards fellowship or stipend.So,we should not worry about fees and just concentrate on study without fear.At which extent this is true? And is it true for every US university?
Rumors and Wrong Information
This exact reason why Happy Schools Blog was started. Students want to study in US and that’s all they care and most of them don’t even know if the information they hear from friends or family members are correct. With so much mis-guided information, students like Paresh make incorrect decision and end up at some university, when the could have opted for much better school.
I was informed that professor will pay our tuition which will not accounted towards fellowship or stipend. So,we should not worry about fees?
Tuition Fee – Out of State, Instate
Read the following articles to understand the difference between In-state and Out of State Fees
Professors will not pay your fees. They will either do one of the following
Hire you as their Research Assistant
Recommend you for Teaching Assistant position to the department
Professor will pay you per month for working as Research Assistant and when you get RA you qualify for In-state Tuition fees. Same applies to TA, but department will pay for TA. If you get RA or TA, you will qualify for In-State Tuition fees.
Scholarship is completely different from RA or TA. Scholarship are given to students based on academic qualification. International students are not given scholarship based on students financial need. Some scholarship will not get you In-State Fees, it will be just a fixed amount.
As of November 6, 2009, approximately 54,700 H-1B cap-subject petitions had been filed. USCIS has approved sufficient H1-B petitions for aliens with advanced degrees to meet the exemption of 20,000 from the fiscal year 2010 cap. Any H1-B petitions filed on behalf of an alien with an advanced degree will now count toward the general H1-B cap of 65,000. USCIS will continue to accept both cap-subject petitions and advanced degree petitions until a sufficient number of H-1B petitions have been received to reach the statutory limits, taking into account the fact that some of these petitions may be denied, revoked, or withdrawn. Via -USCIS
GMAT – 770 – (lengthy article, but if you are serious about getting high score in GMAT, its a MUST read) You can use the tips listed by Slingfox for GRE Exam preparation too.
Except as noted below, the quant section turned out to be largely in line with my expectations. Very early on, I had a string of 8 questions of which 7 were data sufficiency! Halfway through the quant section I was running about 5 minutes ahead of pace. Nonetheless, as the section went on I started falling behind and had to guess on the last question, which was not conceptually difficult, but was mathematically time consuming so I ran out of time.
Verbal, on the other hand, was harder than I expected. I must have spent 7-8 minutes staring at the first two reading comprehension question I got. The hard reading comprehension passage put me behind pace at the 30% mark so I started to speed up, trying to earn back time by doing the SC and CR questions as efficiently as possible. By the 66% mark I was a full ten minutes ahead of pace, so I started to slow down and stared at difficult questions for an inordinate amount of time.
You can read the detailed GMAT Exam preparation at GMAT Club Forum
In several articles about Phd, we have stated that PhD is about interest towards research and not about financial aid and money. It requires dedication and determination to complete PhD and Post Doc.
On Becoming a Scientist
Bruce Michael Alberts is an American biochemist who published an article in Science Magazine On Becoming a Scientist. It’s a MUST read for any students to considering to study Masters or PhD.
He talks about
how to think and function as a scientist
importance of your mentor
how to find problems and solve them
importance of creativity, risk taking and identifying problems
So, are you still interested to study PhD and go on to become a sceientist or you think Masters degree is sufficient? PhD takes about 4 to 5 years to complete and Post Doc takes another 2 years.
Hello everyone, it would be nice to know your GRE Scores. This poll will give an idea on what kinds of readers visit HSB and customize articles based on that.
