Hello all,

I am taking my GRE on November and I am planning on going to grad school on fall 09. However, I want to get an RA/TA position during my course of study at grad school. In other words I do not intend to pay for my study from now onwards. So, I am asking the experienced ones and people like me that what should be the minimum GRE score I should be looking at to get a TA position. I am planning on joining a state university rather than a private one. Please help. 

All comments appreciated.

Sparrow

In what subject,  please clear.

Biochem/Biotech/Bioengineering/Microbiology/Bioagriculture engineering.

Any one of these.

Sparrow

Do your best first in GRE, then, start contacting school, are they willing to take or not in your condition? At that time, you will find yourself where you best fit yourslef, but first try best on GRE.

Thnx Timer. More response please.

Sparrow

depends upon where you wanna go.  are you targeting top 20 schools, top 50, top 100 ...

do not forget that your GPA and recommendation letter plays a great role in addition to your SOP.  1300+ in GRE is good score.  I am sure you will get admission with 1100+ also.  good luck.

Now I am starting my PhD in a state university with full funding but without GRE. I was not willing to take GRE but I have already complete my master's from the same school. It doesn't neet GRE. By the way, I have good experiance in Nepal and USA, but still I can't go in good school because I haven't taken GRE (in fact I don't want to go to good school, they have lot of aspectations and sometime, it might difficult to meet that aspectatation)

timer, thats true.  if you go to good school, expectation might be higher from professors.  sometimes it not only about getting into good school but also surviving at good schools.  we should know our interest and limitations i guess. 

Hmm,,try not to get it under some south asian prof.. Legally a student can work only 20hrs a week during school days and that's what the TA/RA ship pays for,,but then most of the asian ("south") live with this slave driver mentality towards a south asian student that he expects him to put more than 40hrs a week. and the scenario is completely different with a caucasian student,,even the asians (not south)

haha..anyways i understand that getting RA/TA ship is a big deal in itself while at home..anyways best of luck

Hey Jacksparrow,

Good luck with your plans,

as far as i know in your subject you will be easily admitted with a GRE score of 1000 or better. Regarding

getting financial aid will depend on the University you are applying for. I guess a gre score of around 1300 would

get you some type of financial aid from department.

Besides that in lot of cases, you can contact individual professor which match your research interest or the ones

with continuing reserach . They wont care much about your scores if they are looking for somebody to work for them.

Some universities in your program, would deny admission if they cant provide funding and some of them will provide u

admission and will provide a list of professors u can talk to, to further pursue your research interest and land on a

project.

So i would also suggest to write to professors even before u apply to the colleges. U might get lucky and

if some professor is in dire need(as it happens in biochem) then he can arrange a lot of things for u, even a lower gre

score wont matter.

good luck!!!!!!!!!!

chyantu is absolutely correct. Everything depends as he mentioned.

bro one good suggestion from me ( at least i think this is good suggestion) while searching for universities please don't forget to read the profile of faculties and carefully look over their research programs. if you find any professor with good research program with sufficient fund and also find that research program is of your interest, write professor about your interest and write him that you want to work with him. You need to get less GRE score to get RA position than TA position no matter which university you are going to apply. I have seen that some universities will never offer TA position to international students and moreover TA job is hectic job. You will simply kill your time that you need for your study. So try to get RA position.

Thank you all for wonderful suggestions. One more question though: How common is it for international students to pay full tuition fees for their masters?

 

Sparrow

this is common if you are in a business school or may be even in engineering schools.  however, it is not so common if you are a graduate student in physics, chemistry, biology...:)

It also depends on the situation, intially I was admitted in partial waiver but after one year, I became lucky and I got a RA, not best but it is sufficient at that time, pretty cool. Now the situation has changed, I tried 4 months to get RA with GRE, no luck. But accidently, because of my good experiance, best schools are also interested in my resume and mentioned me to give GRE and just appear, but I didn't give GRE, finally, I got a really good offer from my own school but I have some other admission at this time. 

If you are thinking of doing PHD rather than just Masters, there's chance of getting some kind of funding from the University. Well if you wanna get into some biology/chemistry school, you'll probably get some sort of funding cuz there are lots of research opportunities available on those subjects. But if its more professional degree such as Engineering or other, then chance of getting funding is less  unless u have a very good GPA and a good GRE Score.....If you have work experience for at least a year, that helps a Lot.....American believe on Experience rather than Straight Education..
Hope it helps.....