UPDATE: Jen has a birthday, with a cool new bicycle, and Rick makes celebratory crepes that pass that daunting French Guest Test. Do they deserve congratulations? Mais oui!
(1) Tam rocked the GRE this weekend. Tam rules the school!
While I am happy for her, I despair that even though we sound almost identical on the telephone, we do not look similar enough in person for me to send her to take the test for me.
Based on the practice test (non-adaptive, but under timed conditions and intended to be comparable score-wise to the real banana) I took yesterday, I believe that I am likely to get a quite credible score, but I would love to get an incredible score like Tam did. I found myself way running low on time in the quantitative section, so I rushed through a bit at the end, and I misjudged the verbal such that I ended up with 22 extra minutes at the end I could have put to good use examining some of the reading comprehension answers more carefully. (Note: the practice test is longer than the real one because it is non-adaptive and thus less efficient, requiring you to answer more questions.) I definitely could use additional practice under timed conditions to get a better feel for this. For instance, I know I spent way too much time on an early problem involving calculating three combinations and adding them up, which is silly; I just took and aced a probability and statistics class! But I didn't quite trust myself to get the right answer. There is not really time for this kind of doubt on the GRE.
I also hate the way the test forces a sort of unnatural linear thinking on the test-taker. I think part of the reason I killed the GRE back in 1997 was that I was able to skip around within the test rather than having to face each problem as do-or-die before moving to the next one. I always approach every exam by skipping over the problems I cannot immediately answer with confidence to deal with at the end. I feel all fucked up by the requirement that I proceed in a linear fashion through the material, but need to get over this. It's not 1997 anymore.
But this was my first attempt at a practice test under time pressure, so I should not be as depressed by my score as I was - especially given that 720 V, 700 Q is actually quite good. This is 99th percentile for verbal and 89th percentile for math. There is absolutely nothing about this kind of score that would send a red flag for any PhD program in psychology, let alone a masters program. And while a 700 Q isn't great, neither does it indicate that the person is a math moron.
(Regarding a certain friend's statement that anyone who doesn't get an 800 Q is an idiot, this is demonstrably untrue, but no doubt it is a self-serving belief that gives him a great deal of comfort when faced with his own inadequacies in other intellectual realms. (Heh. I interpret not reading my blog as license to be particularly snarky about your shortcomings, dear readers, and to make provocative, unjustified attributions about you. Be warned.) Clearly, anyone who doesn't get a 750 Q is an idiot. Wait, I don't even believe that. I only believe that if I don't get a 750 Q, I am an idiot. Because I am an arrogant snob with a deep-seated fear of math inadequacy.)
Oh, and I guess it may be relevant that I got a migraine halfway through the quantitative section (which I did second) and ended up in bed for several hours after finishing the exam. (I've been in an afternoon headache mode recently.) But it's not like my scores will get reported to the schools like this:
720 V, 700 Q*
* under migraine conditions
But enough whining - back to the congratulations!
(2) My mom totally rocked her performance review at the library. She and her boss are quite simpatico on many things, not the least of which is valuing organization, neatness, exemplary customer service, hard work, and overall excellence in all aspects of the job.
I loved the fact that he identified as her goals for the coming year that she should spend more time talking about books with patrons ("sharing her enthusiasm for books and reading") and should more often share with him her opinions about what they should be doing as a library. Yeah, that should easily be attainable.
(3) Today I congratulate myself for overcoming my recent reticence to do any work on my organic food paper by emailing my professor to set up a meeting. (A small step with large psychological significance.) What should we be congratulating you for? No victory is too slight!
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3 comments:
I suspect you'll get a higher quant score than your practice test suggests. I mean, I finished only 26 out of 28 and definitely completely guessed on at least a couple of the others. And it wouldn't surprise me if I missed others as well, because I tend to make stupid mistakes.
If you really feel concerned about the need to practice, you could schedule two test sessions (which have to be at least a month apart) and plan to not keep the scores from the first. But then you'd never know how you did. And it'd cost you $100 or whatever.
But I think you'll probably rock it. Just go in prepared and, mostly I think, kind of prepared to suffer and be stressed and feel like you're doing badly. Don't let that take you by surprise.
I hated the linearity too. I really did. And it makes it really hard to figure out when to give up on a question and just guess.
Well since you asked... Rick made crepes for my birthday brunch this weekend, and we were pleased that they were even up to the standards of our French guests (they were impressed by the use of cognac and cointreau, and they also taught him how to flip them which was fun). :)
This post made me laugh out loud twice.
The new format sounds sucky. My first experience taking the GRE was sucky in a different way, though. We had two sections of verbal, two of quantitative, two of logic problems, and one experimental, in random order.
I got a logic section, which I barely finished. My very next one was another logic section, which I almost finished (all but one or two). My very next section was another logic section, which I did not finish (maybe 80-85% finished). Can you say completely fried brain? Then I got a Q section. Then another Q section. Then the two verbal sections. Fortunately my third logic section must have been the experimental one, and my brain wasn't too fried for the math, so it worked out.
The last time I took it, I studied lots. This helped (though I still didn't get 800 on the quantitative, grrr). Also, having lived longer and thus magically learned a lot more vocabulary words helped an amazing amount. But studying extra words also helped.
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