Friday, October 17, 2008

The GRE

This Friday afternoon I take my GRE (Graduate Record Examination) test in the hopes of that it will help me to be accepted for PhD studies somewhere.

The general rule for schools in the US is that you need to score over 4/6 on the analytical section (essay questions) and over 600 on the verbal section (language). However, one school suggested that most applicants are accepted with combined verbal and quantitative (math) scores summing around 1350 to 1400 out of a possible 1600.

I'm fairly nervous. By supper Friday I will be fried from 4 hours of straight writing. Worst case scenario is I'll receive a crushing dose of reality and either have to take the exam again in a month or get out while I still can. Best case scenario is that I'll leave the exam full of jubilant optimism!

To give you a flavour for this thing, here are a couple questions I got wrong on the practice test:

1. Which is most nearly opposite to the word BLITHE:

A) CONCEITED
B) DIM
C) STURDY
D) LACONIC
E) GRAVE

2. Before Maria changed jobs, her salary was 24 percent more than Julio's salary. After maria changed jobs, her new salary was 24 percent less than her old salary. Which is greater?

A) Julio's salary
B) Maria's salary
C) They are equal
D) Not enough info has been given

6 comments:

s$s said...

ugh.

7:22 am
Colin Toffelmire said...

Don't worry man, you'll do fine. And the answers are E) Grave and A) Julio's salary. I think. I'm bad at the quantitative questions, only got 540 there. Probably the reason Notre Dame didn't accept me :). Good luck, I'll be praying for you.

11:55 am
erin said...

praying for you...you're insanely brilliant and will rock this thing anyways!

10:48 pm
Bradley Penner said...

Go to the UK. They have better PhD's than the US. Plus no Comps and languages (although learning German is always good, since we'll be speaking that language in heaven!)

11:32 pm
Jon Coutts said...

thanks for the ugh, the prayers, the encouragement, and the humorous advice.

i managed to strike middle ground between worst case and best case scenarios. i did passably on the part that i know about and was slightly disappointed with the polish on my essay answers, which i don't find out about for a few weeks. so until then it is a battle between anxiety, hope, disappointment, and hope.

3:29 am
Jon Coutts said...

you're right colin. the answers were E and A.

i had said D and C. and that's the kind of day its been folks.

4:07 am

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