How much grad schools cares about GRE?

[Victor Alencar]

I'm 3rd year undergraduate student at Brazil and I wish to apply for some USA universities,but I'm scared with GRE.
I have good and knowed physicists for rec. letters, experience with research and good grades,what are my chances? I'm thinking in 4 uni : Stony Brook,Chicago,Cornell and Penn.
Here in Brazil we have a different type of grades, how the universities will analyse this? Here "GPA" is CR and it goes from 0 to 10,for some long reasons there's not a linear proportion.
Just one more : Some tip for GRE?
By the way, before applying for PhD I'll do my master degree here.
Sorry my poor english, I'm learning.

 

[jedishrfu]

Why not get an english GRE practice book and do a test exam?

The GRE is sometimes used as a screener. If you did well that is its above some university admissions cutoff you go to step two where they look at other things in your application. Admissions gets so many applications that they look for reasons to reject.

This all depends on the university though. Do you have any contacts or profs you can write to at the universities you want to attend?

Do you need to take a TOEFL too to demonstrate English proficiency too? They would mention it i think on the graduate admission page of the site.

 

[Dishsoap]

Are you talking about the physics GRE or the general GRE?

 

[Victor Alencar]

In the next semester I'll start to study english for GRE and TOEFL.

Are you talking about the physics GRE or the general GRE?

I'm talking about both of them, but the general GRE is my problem because my english is not very good.

My two best contacts did their PhD's in ICTP(Italy) and Dublin University but they have a lot of contacts over the world, I don't know if they have someone in these universities.