After a long terms of interviews, both for master and post-doctoral candidates, finally they came up with 18 candidates from all over Indonesia. Most of them are from Aceh. From Papua, there are only 4 candidates where 3 for master degree and 1 for post-doctoral degree. It's amazing that I could make it this far.
For the application process, the candidates need to take TOEFL and GRE tests. It was scheduled on September 29th, 2007 for IBT TOEFL and October 1st, 2007 for GRE. Two weeks before the tests, we were also instructed to send some documents, such as reference letters, copies of transcript and diploma, work sample, study objective, personal statement, and university preferences.
During the test, it turned out pretty well on TOEFL. It was held in Kelapa Gading through Direct English as a representation of ETS. Well, it's pretty hard not because we're kind of shocked when we saw the type of the questions. There are listening, reading, speaking, and writing. What the hell, at that time I didn't care about the grade. What I cared about is how to finish this test as fast as possible, so I could get out from this room.
What most interesting is when we took the GRE test at IIEF. We all know that GRE has three sections. They are, verbal section, quantitative section, and analytical writing assessment section. In the verbal section, we're struggle with 3 different type of questions, which are sentence completion, antonym, and analogy. In the quantitative section, it's all about mathematics. In the analytical writing section, we need to provide responses based on the particular issues or arguments. For me, the hardest part is verbal section. How can someone memorize 3500 words within just 4 days? Probably you could tell me how.
Well, at least, I did both of the tests. I'm proud of it and I'm happy. Probably there's going to be an additional test, especially for GRE. I just hope that I can do better next time. By the way, I really appreciate any suggestions from all of you. Thank you.
