by Franziska Boenisch and Adam Dziedzic

Now that you decided to apply for a Ph.D. (abroad), you might need to take a few tests to be included into your application. Let’s look a bit more deeply into what might be required.

Have you heard about standard test like TOEFL of GRE? If you apply to the best schools and English is not your native language, then you’ll have to take the TOEFL (academic version) exam. If you already study in English or have studied English for many years, then it should not be a challenge for you. The test is divided into 4 standard parts: listening, reading, writing, and speaking. Try to take a few example tests to check what kind of scores you would get. If you are above 100 points and feel comfortable with the test structure then probably you’re good to go and take the test for real. If you would like to get higher scores close to the max of 120 points, then you can find many online courses and resources that can further help you to increase your score. It is probably worth paying for such a course and then learning as much as possible since it will not only give you a higher score, but also it’ll pay off later when you arrive on a campus of your future university and are able to better interact with people, follow classes more at ease and write better papers. Usually you have to pay a bit more than 200 USD to take a TOEFL.

The next exam is GRE. It used to be a required exam, but currently many schools just list it as a recommended exam. From our perspective, it’s worth taking it and preparing more towards the academic style of writing. The exam has 3 parts: (1) Verbal Reasoning, (2) Quantitative Reasoning, and (3) Analytical Writing. The first part is rather challenging even for native speakers (though on average they do better than non-native speakers) since you have to master an additional vocab. The number of new words vary depending on your verbal skills but usually it is more than a few thousands more words in your dictionary. Enjoy it, install a program to help with memorization, for example, Anki or SuperMemo. It helped us enormously to make sure that the new words are retained in our memory, can be applied during the test, and then even help you when you write academic papers. Regarding Quantitative Reasoning, probably you do not have to worry about this part at all. Usually, if you finished your high school outside of North America, then your score should be very high, close to max 170 points. If you are a non-native speaker, then try to go through examples of the Quantitative Reasoning part, and master the basic math vocab, such as “circumference” (the perimeter of a circle or ellipse, or in simple terms, the length of the circle). The level of the test does not go beyond the math that you learned in high school. Finally, write a lot and on all possible topics that you encounter for the Analytical Writing part. The writing skill is indispensable in a grad school and beyond. This part can help you understand how to write strong essays with powerful arguments. The closing remark is that, unfortunately, you also have to pay for GRE, around 220 USD.

Good luck with the tests and do not stress too much about them. You only have to pass them with a score above a certain threshold. Check the schools that you’re applying to and find out what kind of scores from the standardized test they require and what were the scores that the current student achieved.