Paul Phillips

Very nicely done sir.

Is this the GRE? Like, the test to get into a masters program? Some of the stuff sounds way unfamiliar, although I guess it has been (this can't be right) about 20 years ago. I don't recall any sort of free form essay.

Glad I took it when I did. I nailed it (then) but I have no clue on maybe 80% of the words you have mentioned. Of course, I really shouldn't discount the odds that I'm getting dumber.

W/r/t grad school, you'll be really glad you did it, although there will be moments when you question what the f you were thinking when you're plowing through some crap no one cares about, or ever will, when you could have been poolside with a nice Sapphire. Overall though, Grad school was easier than college. It seems like they know you've proven yourself, so they drop the weed-out rote crap.

Enjoy.

(Reply) (Thread)

Yes, it's that gre. The essay replaced the fun analytical section in 2002. I think the grad schools were getting tired of applicants who couldn't write their way out of a paper bag if you spotted them a flamethrower.

I'm soooo over the poolside sapphire. I'm coming up on two years with no drink and if it doesn't sound good now, I can't imagine when it will. Now, beer-bonging a fifth of jack daniels, that sounds pretty freaking good. Poolside, especially.

(Reply) (Parent) (Thread)

It's great you're over the Sapphire. All I really meant though was that there will be times when you wonder why you went back when you consider something (anything) else you could have been doing. Not that many times, but a few.

Overall I bet you'll enjoy it.

(Reply) (Parent) (Thread)

with no study, i got a 780 on the math (i missed at least one stupid geometry question, that pissed me off) and an abysmal 590 on verbal. i think a 5 on the writing. it wasn't even necessary for me to do well, because my college had a program where i could go straight to get a master's in some fields, like mine (EE). i just needed to take the GRE for completeness sake. lately though, i've been thinking of a phd, and i think i should take the test again, and this time study. i really wanna get a 800 on verbal, but i remember it being very difficult.

(Reply) (Thread)

I wrote like a blogger on the GMAT and I got a 6.

(Reply) (Thread)

Yes, but in business school they relish that quality.

(Reply) (Parent) (Thread)

I think the GRE and GMAT essay tests are the same.

(Reply) (Parent) (Thread)

I recently took the GRE and got a 5.5 on the written. I think they're extra impressed when you actually name the fallacy of the argument. This is why philosophy majors typically do very well relative to other students. I was happy, because a score of 5.5 means you got a perfect 6 on one (no doubt the argument essay) and a 5 on the other (the issue).

Meanwhile my brother took the GRE in hopes of getting into creative writing M.F.A. programs and only scored a 4.5. I kept telling him they are not looking for the cutesy flowery writing of future authors of america. They want hardcore, to-the-point writing. Think APA publication.

(Reply) (Parent) (Thread)

I think they're extra impressed when you actually name the fallacy of the argument.

Oh shoot, I wish I'd thought of that. And I so love typing "post hoc ergo propter hoc".

(Reply) (Parent) (Thread)

I did poorly on the writing section. I took the test twice because I had done badly on verbal the first time and my writing section went from 4.5 to 3.0 on the second try. I think they disliked the fact that I was using probability arguments in deciding whether to believe a claim or not. Since most of my essay was using those mathematics terms, they gave me a very poor grade (probably a 1.0 but maybe a 2).

But yeah, the math part was very easy. No challenge to get 800.

You might have missed more than two questions, I know for a fact that I missed at least one question on my math test and still got 800, so there are some questions where you can err and not drop the grade.

(Reply) (Thread)

790/700 back in 1990. I did no studying other than reading the test booklet. The math score probably isn't impressive to a lot of your readers, but it had been three years and 2 quarters since I had a math class - so I was happy with it. Tying your threads together... since I went 720/720 on the SAT (which I also didn't prep for), I took this as at least one data point that moderate doses of recreational drugs administered 1-7 times/week for 4 years have no lasting, negative effects on the brain.

BTW, as part of a New Jersey program run by Johns Hopkins program to track "gifted" children, I took the regular SAT in 7th grade. The high school kids I took it with were not amused. I scored 580/500, both above the median SAT for college-bound seniors, which earned me a trip to an awards ceremony in Trenton where they handed out an offprint of a Scientific American article on the 4-color map problem. I moved to California shortly thereafter, so I have no idea what goodies I may have got out of Johns Hopkins if I had continued in the program. (googles) Crap, that looks kind of cool.

(Reply) (Thread)

I first took the SAT in 6th grade, as part of the same Johns Hopkins program, and then I took it every year until 11th. I forget my early scores. I went to one of those summer programs, too. You're right, it was cool.

(Reply) (Parent) (Thread)

Do you remember the trend? Linear, accelerating, sigmoidal?

Totally useless trivia for the day. Retired porn star and early web adopter Asia Carrera was also part of the NJ branch of the Johns Hopkins program.

(Reply) (Parent) (Thread)

My mom might have records somewhere, I can check. I'd be guessing. I think my first score was in the neighborhood of yours, and my last was 1490? 1510? and the curve would be linearish. 780/710 for 1490 sounds right. Okay, bad memory coming back. My math score flatlined at 780 and maybe 790 but I never hit 800. I don't know about now, but in those days I was under the impression 800 meant actually missing zero problems.

(Reply) (Parent) (Thread)

I got a 760 on the math and never took anything past high school pre-Calculus (eight years prior). It really, really, really concerns me that the average score is so low.

Oh, and I got a 640 on the verbal, mostly because I slacked off on studying my vocabulary lists. There were at least three words I recognized from the list but of which I didn't remember the definition.

This is four years ago. And I did a 5.5 on the essay (which I would expect our host to get, too; I've never met anyone who got a six).

(Reply) (Parent) (Thread)

It really, really, really concerns me that the average score is so low.

You think that concerns you? I just discovered that 30% of people don't graduate from high school! What do all those people DO for the rest of their lives? How can there possibly be enough jobs for them? (Yes, I realize there aren't.) Graduating from high school doesn't require much more than showing up. There must be whole worlds within worlds out there.

(Reply) (Parent) (Thread)

What do all those people DO for the rest of their lives?
A lot of them end up working in Vegas, the last place in America where you can make a reasonable living in a service job thanks to the unions. This drags in a lot of high school dropouts. I remember reading somewhere that LV has the lowest percentage of college grads of any major US city. That's just one of the reasons why it's the stupidest place on earth.

IIRC, there were some years before they re-centered (mostly raised) the scores in 1994 where even a perfect score on would not result in an 800 if your particular test lacked a few of the most difficult questions. Even better, here's a chart showing what your pre-'94 scores would be worth today. So you can tell the whiz kids to fuck off, you got the equivalent of 1600 too. (I know that's been keeping you up nights.)

BTW, what's your freerice.com score? I've played for an hour and am stuck at 49. I don't actually know more than a small percentage of the words at that point, it's just guessing based on roots and process of elimination.

(Reply) (Parent) (Thread)

I haven't made it to 49 - mostly I floated between 47 and 48. Now I might have to try it again.

(Reply) (Parent) (Thread)