Wednesday, November 16, 2005
(7:01 AM) | Dave Belcher:
GRE
It's way too early for anyone to be awake, let alone writing a blog post...but I have to take the GRE today (a pathetic attempt to raise my even more pathetic prior score). And, as many of you know, you have to give the GRE testmakers not only the benefit of the doubt on each of their sly questions, but also an entire day of your time. Jodi has been studying non-stop for this thing--undoubtedly because she was told repeatedly by everyone that she needed upwards of a 700 comprehensive score to even be considered at Duke. I, on the other hand, have procrastinated my ass off. Since I decided to apply for guitar programs I have been quite aware that even though a school might "require acceptable GRE scores," this is nowhere near as bad as Duke's stringent requirements, especially since the audition pretty much counts for everything. At the same time, I want to make my chances of admission as high as possible (obviously, though, I am putting quite a bit of stock in hoping that the schools that do require GRE scores care more about the auditions), so I will take the damn GRE again...but I don't think it will help much.I determined last night that even if I had studied the verbal section for an entire year, I would not be able to read passages the way that the testmakers want me to, let alone "comprehend" them. I truly wish that there were some way to completely dismantle the GRE and either replace it with something more consistent and realistic, or to request that schools actually do the work of checking out their applicants beyond "numbers," especially since some of the worst students in a graduate program are the ones with excellent GRE scores, while the ones who excel bombed it (this is of course not across the board...I refer to Adam and Josh, both who aced the GRE, including literally acing the special literature section--they seem to be doing pretty well in their respective graduate pursuits). Well, I guess this hope is a little much to ask for this morning, since I have to leave in a half-hour. Wish me luck, or pray for destruction of the computer systems, or something!
