Monday, August 15, 2005

780V/740Q Or How My GRE Score is an Act of God

I am not posting my score to boast or to pronounce that I triumphed over ETS this last Saturday. I am posting it in order to state, once and for all, that GRE scores are COMPLETELY ARBITRARY.

Here's the story: the highest I had ever managed to score on a diagnostic was 700 Verbal and 690 Quantitative. That was in the comfort and calmness of my own home. On Saturday, after giving up my personal possessions and having my photo taken (ummm, this has a striking resemblance to being incarcerated), I began to bomb the GRE. I spent 5 MINUTES on the first math question. I could feel the fear rising in the pit of my stomach. I was SO out of time for the rest of the section that I guessed blindly on the last 10 questions and most of the graph interpretation questions. I was also short on time for the verbal section - by the third reading comprehension passage I was skimming the text.

I took the experimental section in order to put off seeing my devastating score. After I pressed the button to accept my score I literally had to put my hand over my mouth to supress an expletive of disbelief (this would be frowned upon by the warden - sorry, proctor).

I am left to conclude that my score is either 1) completely of my own imagination 2) a fluke due to a computer error or 3) a Supernatural intervention. Take your pick.

Moltmannian has informed me that I have scored above what Yale's School of Economics requires for the Quantitative section. I find this highly hilarious.

7 comments:

Melvin Ming said...

I think you qualify as the Ringmaster, and I am so proud of you, even though I am also a bit jealous that my computer didn't malfunction as well as yours, or that the supernatural grace all got poured out on you--though some did splash on me too. I can't complain.

noirah said...

Total rock star.

hap said...

Nice work. If you can make Yale, you can probably make Havahd, too...Tired of Chicago winters yet? Try Bahston!

Anonymous said...

haha... you are a supergenius!

myevilterran said...

Congratulations! Hey, if grad school doesn't work out, Kai could use a genius baby-sitter/nanny.

guanilo said...

Holy s*&$%#..........! Congratulations!

I had nearly an identical experience. I was sure I bombed the quantitative, but ended up getting a full 100 pts. over anything I had done at home. There is a weird time warp/slip space rupture/alternate reality thing going on at those testing booths.

And yes, if security was that tight in our airports, we'd never have another terrorism problem in this country ever. I was ready for a body cavity exam by time I got into the testing room.

Way to go. That score won't hurt at all come application time.

Bird On A Line said...

Damn, girl! You SMOKED 'em! Please send me your stuff on it whenever you think about it - I hope to do well, but not THAT well! :)