Once I decided to go to grad school the biggest obstacle was taking the GRE. One nice thing about going to grad school is it is a chance to do over things I wished I'd done differently when going to college. I've always been good at taking standardized tests, I think it is because when I was little they had us take a ton of them as the school district got paid extra to test out new tests. When it came time for the SAT I don't think I studied at all. They used to say that you couldn't really study for test like the SAT, but that's just not really true. They're not the same as normal tests where you learn the material in a class, but you can still definitely study for them. I did well on the SAT, but there was just no reason to pass up studying a little and doing better. When it came time for the GREs I really needed to study. I haven't taken a math class in about seven or eight years, or taken a test of any sort since I graduated.
Luckily I didn't have much going on during the whole summer so I could spend a lot of time studying. Often I'd go down to this one restaurant that was open almost all summer but pretty empty. I'd eat lunch then study for several hours. At first it was a lot of math review, but after a while it was just endless practice questions. Besides the math there was also the language section. Most of those were reading comprehension questions. I've done a lot of these over the years, but the GRE ones were particularly hard. They'd often come down to a very subtle interpretation of one word or phrase in the passage or the question.
Besides just studying the material I spent a lot of time just practicing taking such a long test. The GRE is a massively long test. It starts with an hour long writing section than five 30 minute long math or language sections. With breaks the whole thing takes about four hours. Just trying to concentrate for that long is exhausting. I had to practice just sitting there taking the test for that long.
My sister also took the GRE, though about two months before me. She got a really good score which helped kick my studying into overdrive. Just before I took the test I was doing really well on most of the practice questions, especially the math ones, but it was hard to know how much that translated into the actual test.
I had to go down to Hong Kong to take the test. They have it in Guangzhou but I could figure out how to register for it. The morning of the test I woke up with a really sore neck, and managed to make it much worse by trying to stretch it. I was in real pain. I could barely move at all without my neck spasming The pain was really intense. It felt like someone was twisting the mussels in my neck as hard as they could. I couldn't even put my head level, I spent the whole day with it crooked over to one side.
I almost didn't want to take the test, but I'd spent such a long time studying I just couldn't stop so close to being done. If you had seen me during the test, which was at some Hong Kong school, you'd have thought I was a crazy person. Every few minutes when my neck spasmed I'd have to stop and make this horrible grimacing face while trying not to cry out and bother everyone else. I basically skipped every break because I felt so terrible I just wanted to get it done. I took very little medicine because I was worried it would effect my performance.
One of the interesting things about the GRE is that it gives you your score on two out of the three sections as soon as you are done. The last section the written part takes a few weeks. I was terrified when I got to the last screen that says basically, "do you want to see your scores and make the whole thing official, or throw them out but never know how you did." I had studied more than I had ever studied for any test, but I'd been in so much pain all day I had no idea how I did. I didn't think I did badly but it was a hard test.
Having done all that though there was no way I could live with not seeing my scores. Even if I felt I'd done badly I'd still have been dying to know. After all that I got a 170 out of 170 on the language part, a perfect score and 99th percentile, though interestingly I learned later that I didn't get a few questions wrong. On the math section I got a 168 out of 170, a 96th percentile I think. No matter how much better I feel I'm doing at math I always score higher on language on standardized tests.
I was elated, these were giant score which was just what I needed given some of the deficiencies in my application. I learned later that I got 4.5 out of 6 on the written. An OK score but not nearly like the others. The written section scoring is a bit nuts. It's in half point increments with the percentiles going 4-50% 4.5-72% 5-90% 5.5-96% 6-99%. A 4.5 was OK but not nearly as good as the other two parts. Still I was thrilled with how I did and it helped a lot in applying for schools. But more on that next time.
Luckily I didn't have much going on during the whole summer so I could spend a lot of time studying. Often I'd go down to this one restaurant that was open almost all summer but pretty empty. I'd eat lunch then study for several hours. At first it was a lot of math review, but after a while it was just endless practice questions. Besides the math there was also the language section. Most of those were reading comprehension questions. I've done a lot of these over the years, but the GRE ones were particularly hard. They'd often come down to a very subtle interpretation of one word or phrase in the passage or the question.
Besides just studying the material I spent a lot of time just practicing taking such a long test. The GRE is a massively long test. It starts with an hour long writing section than five 30 minute long math or language sections. With breaks the whole thing takes about four hours. Just trying to concentrate for that long is exhausting. I had to practice just sitting there taking the test for that long.
My sister also took the GRE, though about two months before me. She got a really good score which helped kick my studying into overdrive. Just before I took the test I was doing really well on most of the practice questions, especially the math ones, but it was hard to know how much that translated into the actual test.
I had to go down to Hong Kong to take the test. They have it in Guangzhou but I could figure out how to register for it. The morning of the test I woke up with a really sore neck, and managed to make it much worse by trying to stretch it. I was in real pain. I could barely move at all without my neck spasming The pain was really intense. It felt like someone was twisting the mussels in my neck as hard as they could. I couldn't even put my head level, I spent the whole day with it crooked over to one side.
I almost didn't want to take the test, but I'd spent such a long time studying I just couldn't stop so close to being done. If you had seen me during the test, which was at some Hong Kong school, you'd have thought I was a crazy person. Every few minutes when my neck spasmed I'd have to stop and make this horrible grimacing face while trying not to cry out and bother everyone else. I basically skipped every break because I felt so terrible I just wanted to get it done. I took very little medicine because I was worried it would effect my performance.
One of the interesting things about the GRE is that it gives you your score on two out of the three sections as soon as you are done. The last section the written part takes a few weeks. I was terrified when I got to the last screen that says basically, "do you want to see your scores and make the whole thing official, or throw them out but never know how you did." I had studied more than I had ever studied for any test, but I'd been in so much pain all day I had no idea how I did. I didn't think I did badly but it was a hard test.
Having done all that though there was no way I could live with not seeing my scores. Even if I felt I'd done badly I'd still have been dying to know. After all that I got a 170 out of 170 on the language part, a perfect score and 99th percentile, though interestingly I learned later that I didn't get a few questions wrong. On the math section I got a 168 out of 170, a 96th percentile I think. No matter how much better I feel I'm doing at math I always score higher on language on standardized tests.
I was elated, these were giant score which was just what I needed given some of the deficiencies in my application. I learned later that I got 4.5 out of 6 on the written. An OK score but not nearly like the others. The written section scoring is a bit nuts. It's in half point increments with the percentiles going 4-50% 4.5-72% 5-90% 5.5-96% 6-99%. A 4.5 was OK but not nearly as good as the other two parts. Still I was thrilled with how I did and it helped a lot in applying for schools. But more on that next time.
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