Monday, December 14, 2009

blogging as therapy

I just got back from taking the Graduate Record Examine, the standardized test that a lot of grad schools use in applications. I nailed the verbal section and I feel pretty good about the essay part, but my game just crumbled on the math. I bought and worked through this 300+ page GRE prep book for the math, but today I got stymied on question #2 of the math section and it unnerved me. I ended up only answering 18 out of 28 of the questions because I ran out of time. Good thing I'm looking at the humanities end of the academic spectrum! At least this puts all the writing I've been doing into proper perspective.

11 comments:

  1. Here's hoping you did well!

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  2. Sounds like you did well Jeff. Hope you get the scores you need.

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  3. Good. I don't envy you; I needed to take remedial Algebra for a THEATRE degree. Go figure.

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  4. Oh God! Do I remember that feeling!

    I was queasy walking out of my LSAT (law school entrance exam).

    I ended up doing pretty well, but I don't remember my score... It's amazing how much those things matter at the time, but are quickly forgotten once they're passed. The minute you're accepted to a grad school, you'll forget your score, too.

    Things have a way of working out. You'll do fine.

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  5. I had the same problem, Jeff. I worked through a huge math book and still ended up not breaking 700 on that section.

    Many of the students I knew got so angry with the system and ETS that they let it impact their scores. At least you avoided that.

    I was able to get my scores as soon as I completed the exam; I take you were not. Did you take some kind of funky paper exam, or did you do it on the computer?

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  6. I sympathize with you!!! Yesterday I chose to count save throw modifiers instead of learning french or logic,
    ended up ditching classes. Anyway, good luck!

    btw. drop by and leave a vote in my poll!

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  7. Hope you did well.

    I wrote the GMAT for entrance to grad school and then wrote it again after I completed my masters degree.

    I was top of my class when I graduated with my masters degree. When I wrote the exam the second time I scored 20 points lower.

    Gotta love standardized tests.

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  8. I was able to get my scores as soon as I completed the exam; I take you were not. Did you take some kind of funky paper exam, or did you do it on the computer?

    I got the verbal and analytical scores right away. I'm just too embarrassed by the math results to actually mention them. The essay section is graded by real humans, so I won't know the score on that for a while.

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  9. Ah, gotta love the GRE's. I managed to take them with exactly 1 hour of sleep under my belt and NO PREP at all. Not the best idea, considering I didn't even know at the time that how you answered the first few questions in a section determined the difficulty (and therefor the possible total score) of the rest of the section. I was spending less time on the beginning sections so that I wouldn't run out of time, when I should have been really taking my time on the first couple of questions to make sure that I got a chance at the max points. I still did OK, didn't break 700 on the math (670, I think), but I wasn't too disappointed with that considering that my last math class had been a college algebra class years earlier.

    I am sure you did fine, and anyway, in my experience test scores really aren't all that important. Good writing samples and good recommendations are were it is at.

    Good luck.

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  10. "were it is at"

    How embarrassing! How did I manage to score so high on the verbal section again?

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