TAKING THE GRE

 If you’re looking for someone to give you a step by step guide on taking the GRE and getting the highest possible score, I am not your girl! 

Malcolm Gladwell, has a podcast that I really enjoy called Revisionist History. I recently listened to an episode called The Tortoise and the Hare, where he discusses our obsession with testing, and making everyone perform rapidly. He mentions that some people are tortoises and are really really smart, but take their time, while other people are hare’s and perform really well and really fast (like we’re required to do on standardized tests). When the tortoise is required to speed up they don’t perform as well and when the hare is required to take their time they don’t perform as well. 

I am a tortoise through and through, and though I have often obsessed about grades in graduate school (though I’m learning not to, and everyone assures me they don’t matter THAT much), I could not stress about the GRE. 

I believe I mentioned in a previous post that I decided to apply to graduate school and take the GRE last minute. I realized I really wanted to give it a shot and I went for it. That didn’t leave much time for studying, I just had to do what I could and hope for the best. 

I had taken the GRE about 4 or 5 years earlier, they had recently changed the grading system and were still working on what the percentiles and scores would look like at that time so I wasn’t too invested in my score. This time around, I didn’t have time to stress about it, I had already given away my GRE books so I downloaded a couple of apps (which have since been deleted from my phone but I think they were just the GRE apps that are available) to help me practice math and learn new vocabulary words daily, and that was the extent of it. 

Now surely you can do more than that. Start studying a year or so ahead of time, take practice exams, quiz yourself frequently and prepare to be a hare. And if you do that great! That will certainly help you better prepare, but at the end of the day, you will have to write that score on your application no matter how high or low, and hope for the best. 

In either case, my point is to try and relax. Your score is a piece of the total package that is you. And reviewers are looking at the whole package. As a tortoise I bring so much more to the table than how quickly I can answer the correct question, and so do you! This test is a stepping stone to starting your graduate school journey, treat it as such. It does not define you, it will not dictate your future, and it may not even be the determining factor of which school you get into. 

Study well (do more than I did) and do your best. Don’t be too hard on yourself either way. No matter the outcome you’re still dope, and you will go to grad school! 

-EM