Entries tagged with gre

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A day of wonder

I thought it was an ominous sign that the minute I was supposed to report to the testing center to take the GRE that it started hailing.

I was amused by the fact that the test administrator was so shocked when I filled in a bunch of my information (apparently they're supposed to but it didn't say that on the paper) that she promptly showed it to another administrator, who was amazed and said they were hiring if I'd like a job.

I sat down to take the test, and around 3 and a half hours later...

( I hope you know that this will go down on your permanent record )

It felt wonderful to come home with my brownie sundae reward and gladly toss all study materials on the recycling stack!

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Hrmph.

No studying + reading massive novel = +100 points verbal/-70 quantitative

So much for thinking I knew what was in store for me on Tuesday. What makes me a bit nervous is up until now I've taken practice GREs that weren't actually from ETS (the test maker) itself; today's is the first of two that I can.

This makes no sense whatsoever, but I'll take it since the end result is still +30. My OCD side is twitching to study math again, then take the non-ETS and ETS practice tests tomorrow & Sunday and see what happens...

Current Mood: mellow

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The GRE CAT can kiss my A..

I keep coming across advice that says to spend at least 50 hours of prep work in order to succeed on the GRE.

I've come to the conclusion that my total combined score will be in the 1100-1150 range, that this is perfectly sufficient since I'm not trying to get into engineering school or the Ivy League, and that time is better spent running around in the yard with my family during a rare break from the rainy season. I'll meander through some high frequency vocab lists during lunch at work & run a few more practice tests but that's it: no more studying.

Oh yes, and picking up the almost-1,000 page book that's on hold for me at the library tomorrow that I was going to put off until the last day of the hold so I wouldn't be tempted to read it instead of study. I would have bought it outright, but the last one in the series was so disappointing that I wanted to make sure I liked this one first.

Current Mood: frustrated

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I be eloquent 'n stuff

This is I said verbatim after I kissed the Blarney Stone in 2001.

My theory of it bequeathing eloquent speech to others by taking it from those who had some semblance of it in the first place appears to be correct as I've received the same mediocre verbal GRE score 3 times in a row. Today I finished 10 minutes early with great confidence that I had the answers right, then reviewed them only to find I made a bunch of really stupid mistakes in addition to bombing the antonyms. GAAAH!

I never thought my quantitative score would be a full 100 points higher than verbal, especially since all I did last week was study the verbal sections I keep bombing & only did a quick formula review this morning.

More studying & another try next Sunday...

Edit: after doing some research, my combined score is above 1000 & the mediocre verbal score is right on the minimum many other MLIS programs require. The key may be slowing down & keeping the quantitative score steady after all.

Current Music: HJ

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Always asking questions

You have undoubtedly helped many other students who didn't speak up.

My affirmation of the day, received from the librarian who has identified a fix to the testing database and is having me try it again from home tomorrow morning.

It helps when most of the day I've wanted to scream 'I'm not a CPA! If I was, I sure as hell wouldn't be working here for the salary I have!'