GRE Retake

December 5, 2009 - 4:13 PM

As one of my blogs from two weeks ago explains, I BOMBED my first attempt at the GRE, getting a 970 out of 1600.

So! I bucked up, bought more GRE supplies, studied almost every day for two weeks, and took the damn thing again.

It was in the course of trying to reschedule my appointment for this week that I discovered the true purpose of the GRE-MONEY.

The prep course I took: $150

The book I bought: $20

The first test: $150

The second test: $150

The rescheduling fee: $50

The cancellation fee: $70

The fee if you are a no-show: $150

THAT IS IT! I am done paying the ETS people for a test that doesn't even demonstrate my skills, knowledge and talents.

Now, I might sound resentful, but listen to this:

Between my first test and my second, I decided that my verbal score (a 570) was lower than I should have gotten. I am a word person for God's sake! I should be in the 600 range for sure! As far as math goes, maybe my 400 was just simply the best I could do. I have always been foggy at math, and even though I understand the concepts, implementing them is a different story.

SO my solution was to study all of vocabulary words I could stomach. I studied hundreds of words and actually committed them to memory! And when I got to the test, all of the words were ones that I had encountered in my preparation.

The math questions seemed to be quite easy, which was disappointing because the questions get harder as you answer questions correctly, and vice versa.

Thus, when I was getting difficult vocabulary words and mindless math problems, I felt like my test was finally going the way I expected.

My final scores: Verbal: from a 570 to a 500; Quantative: from a 400 to a 540.

OVERALL!!! The section I studied for decreased and the section I didn't spend five minutes on was boosted by ONE HUNDRED AND FORTY POINTS!

This is preposterous. After I got this silly results, I decided that this test is a joke. Obviously it CAN'T represent my abilities as a student and as a potential graduate student because my preparation and my scores are indirectly proportional.

Although I still don't have the score I want, I refuse to sink any more money into this part of my graduate school application. The results are so erratic and unrepresentative of my strengths that it would be, by definition, insane to pay for another 3 hour session of pointless mental exercise.

My advice to graduate programs: do as Columbia and Portland State do and don't require ridiculous tests that mean nothing about an applicant's intellectual capacity.