Writing Section - essay about dream from a passage and listening to a lecture

According to biochemical and physiology research done by Hobsin and McCarly, dreams are the result of chemicals in the brain that cause neurons to fire. In the research they use cats because cats have the same sleeping activity that human have. In dreams brain tells the body to move but the messages do not transfer to the body, do no movement is initiated. About the content of the dreams can be explained just using the activation-synthesis theory. For example if you are trying to escape from something, the brain receive a message to run, but the legs don't response. And based on that theory there is no hidden meaning on our dream and there is nothing to do with the unfulfilled desires. dream is just a chemical response to brain cells.

The biochemical and physiology research is very different from what Freud has identified. According to Freud a dream is a symbolic image about our unfulfilled desires while it is not the case by the Hobsin and McCarly research.

Speaking Section - Live on the Campus Dormitories or Apartments Off Campus?

If I have to choose between the two, I think I prefer to live in the apartment than in the dormitories. While if I live in the dormitory, I don't have to think about transportation and distance to the campus but it doesn't let me to live with my family there. I have wife and kids so apartment is the best choice for me. In the apartment, I can have a privacy with my family and I can reduce my spending by cooking our own meals. And for the transportation, I will choose to use bicycle because it is much cheaper and makes me healthy.

PhD to the USA requirements

Several things need to be prepared when you decided to take a PhD degree especially in the US. One of them is a GRE test score. GRE is a standardized aptitude test for engineering graduate school. It assesses of your critical thinking, analytical writing, verbal reasoning, and quantitative reasoning skills — all skills developed over the course of many years. This is one of the most challenging blocker for several people of taking a PhD especially if you are not an English native speaker. Beside of that GRE also pretty expensive, it costs $160 in the US and $190 in other countries. There are many of online courses, for example magoosh.com, that give what you need for the test.

If you're not from an English speaking country, you need to prepare document proof of English proficiency. You can choose between iBT TOEFL or IELTS. iBT TOEFL is much better if you are targeting for a PhD in the US and IELTS is best for European country and Australia. American universities accept both but it requires bigger score of IELTS than other countries.

My PhD dream

One of my dream is to pursue a PhD at a top 40 ranked university. Many of them are in the United States. The university of my preference is the University of Chicago. The University of Chicago is ranked 8th world wide and its computer science faculty is ranked around 30th. Another reason why I chose that university is because in my previous work experience, I have been working with a professor from that university. So there is a big chance that I can get a good reference letter and a big chance to get accepted for the PhD program. Other than that Chicago is one of big major city in the USA. There are so many big companies in there so that during a summer break I can do a summer internship in one of those companies and hopefully I can have a good career after I graduated.