Writing Section - Apply for First Choice of School Only vs Apply for Several Schools

Apply for the first choice of school or apply for several schools? From my personal experience, I can say that I prefer the second strategy to apply for several schools. In the first strategy, apply for the first-choice school only, I would say that it is a pretty risky strategy. There is a tendency that the first-choice school is a favorite school. There will be a lot of brilliant students applying for admission to that school. So you will get a fierce competition from those brilliant students. The harder the competition is, the smaller chance of acceptance you will get.

To boost your chance for securing your position in  your favorite major, I suggest to apply for several schools. You can have the most competitive school as your first choice and 2 other less competitive schools for your other option. If you can't get into the first choice school there are two more schools for your options. Another advantage of applying for several school is you already have all requirements for school admission. At the time you are ready to apply for a school, I assume you already have all requirement for the admission. Some requirements such as TOEFL and GRE scores, are valid only for two years, if you failed to get into a school this year, there is one more year for you to use those test scores. In the case for the first strategy, you only apply to 2 schools in two years. In the case for the second strategy, you can apply for six schools in two years!

Writing Section - THe Nebular Hypothesis

According to the Nebular Hypothesis, 4 - 5 millions years ago there were cloud dust and gas that positioned around the current solar system location. Their composition material were 99% hydrogen and helium plus all natural occurring element. The gravity initiated a collapse in the cloud caused the cloud to spin rapidly. That spinning process resulted a disk shape with rounded middles and flat edges. Further more it will create small objects that is called planetesimals. These planetesimals collided and captured and forming bigger objects that formed planets. While smaller part of the dust and gas created planets, 99% of it was forming a Sun. The Sun became a star and began to radiate the light and heat.
The lecture shows that by using a high speed computer we are able to do experiment and simulation of that Nebular Hypothesis. By doing the experiment we are now able to understand how stars were born. That experiment based on the information we can find in the passage that stars were formed because of the gravity pull. Another interesting conclusion we can draw is if we do the math some stars form a solar systems and sometimes it can support life.

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.