Just got back from taking the GRE. I did okay. 660 verbal, 600 quantitative which puts me in the 92-93 percentile on the former, about the 48% on the latter. I’m pleased with the latter, not so much on the former.

To say it plainly, I wish I would have done better on the verbal. Yes, a 92-93% isn’t anything to sniff at but I really wanted to knock it out of the park and I didn’t do that. It became obvious after taking practice test after practice test that I probably wouldn’t be able to knock it out of the park just because the way the questions are worded and the way scores are calculated. My absolute lowest score I would tolerate was a 90% so I reached that–barely.

A 600 on the quantitative was my highest score and underlines why the whole test is a sham. Out of thirty questions, I felt confident I answered two or three correctly. Literally. Otherwise it was just guess, guess, guess and for the first time in all my practice tests, I was running out of time and had to answer the last five questions in five minutes. I don’t think I even understood the question on a few of them.

Compare that to the verbal. Out of thirty, I probably got five or six wrong. Of those, I would be willing to bet I gave the second-best answer on four or five them. I felt confident on the vast majority of questions, and that’s probably because I had at least two questions I was uncomfortable with in the first ten questions. I realized about 3/4ths of the way through that I felt the last half of the questions were relatively easy which meant I’d gotten something wrong early.

The writing section went well– I think . I expect 5.5′s or 6′s on both essays and I’ll be quite upset if I don’t get that. Some essay questions I felt more comfortable breaking down that others, and I think I did a pretty good job of breaking down both of these and I also wrote a lot, which they say is a key to doing well. Fingers crossed. I think it takes a couple weeks to get the results.

Mostly though, it’s over. Not much I can do about it now and, in fairness, it’s probably accurate enough. I little Googling showed that most English graduate programs either expect above a 90% or state that the average verbal score for the people who were admitted were 640-660. As long as I’m in the average for the admissions as opposed to applicants, I can’t claim the scores hurt my chances. An outrageously good score would definitely help, but I don’t think I’m capable of an outrageously good score on a standardized test.

Anyway, it’s over. Now it’s time to fill out applications, whip my academic and creative writing samples into shape, and start harrassing my recommenders for their letters. Comparatively, this is the easy part.

Current Mood – Exhausted |