DrFaustus666

Thanks, it's by Picasso. I have a print of the same work on my wall. As to "not worth it," let me re-phrase: People on this forum have been accepted at Ivies with lower scores, and rejected from 2nd- and 3rd-tier schools with higher scores. It might have been a better use of my time to do more research, another conference or two, etc.

Of course you're right. What's so confusing is how the same person's score can vary so much from one sitting of the test to another. I think these couple of data points may show a bigger picture: that this silly test, no matter how much some few of us obsess over it, is nothing more than a general indicator of our ability---and a highly flawed one at that.

A quick update for my friends and anyone else interested. After almost two years of attempting to ace the GRE, I finally got a decent quantitative score, 770, up from a low of 640. Woo-hoo. It IS possible to significantly increase one's quantitative score, even for a liberal arts person. However, in the same sitting, I also got my worst-ever verbal score, 680. Not a bad score certainly, but I (once!) got an 800, and hoped to hold onto it. WRONG. Conclusion: it's not worth it. Yeah I know, many people realized that after one or two takings Cheers and good luck to all.

There are many posts concerning the AW score. Almost everyone agrees that the AW score is not highly regarded by most universities. Or rather, the AW score carries much less weight than your "writing sample" and your Statement of Purpose. There are a few people who assert that the AW score is a good representation of your ability to write to a particular format, in a time-limited setting. But this begs the question of what is useful for a graduate student. Most of us almost never write about subjects with which we're not familiar and within a tight deadline (measured in minutes, not days!). True, we do have essay questions on exams, but we have plenty of time to prepare for the exam, and, if the grading is at all fair, our essays are judged by their content, not their correspondence with ETS's model of a "good" essay. Bottom line: you might re-take the GRE for the AW score, IF the universities you apply to have cutoffs. But I'd not worry too much about it, your other qualifications seem good, to me at least.

I'm surprised nobody replied to your post . Judging from others' posts over the last couple of years, it seems that a 690 quantitative score will most likely not keep you out of most social science programs, provided the rest of your application is solid. Just at a guess, I would think that you'd need a very strong quantitative score (760+) only if your research plans included a lot of very heavy statistical analysis or computer modeling, etc. I would presume the opposite also to be true: if you want to use "softer" methods of research, then you would need only basic math competence, i.e., a score above about 600. Hope that helps.

For what it's worth, I agree with this post 1000 times over. It's hard to say, and even harder to hear, but you must break out, by yourself and for yourself. And much better to do it while you're still young. As other posters have also said, some counseling will help you, and I strongly advise that too. The question of whether you earn an MFA or PhD, or five PhD's, is really irrelevant. You mother is running your life, and you must take charge of it and break free of her. Feel free to personal-message me if you'd like any further details, my own broad outlines are very, very similar though the details are totally different, in fact, opposite. Been there done that. You don't want to follow in my footsteps. Wishing you all the best! John

ask.com used to have some info about this, but as the other poster said, it's anybody's guess as to how reliable that might be.

My take is, you should either (1) be a LOT more of a pest to the professor of the class --- FORCE him/her to find a grad student to help you, regardless of how much of a pain-in-the-butt you see yourself to be; or (2) withdraw from the class. Even a "C" in a graduate class, even if that class is not directly related to your major, is widely regarded as a failure. You may still complete your M.S. degree (assuming this is the only "C" on your transcript), but if you ever want to go for a Ph.D. in the same field, at the very least, you'll probably have some explaining to do. Also, don't let the other students' insouciant attitude throw you. It's YOUR degree, your career, not theirs.

As a perennial non-quantitative person and student of the GRE, I have to chime in with my opinion that virtually ALL the quantitative questions are trick questions at some level. The tricks, especially in the first three or four questions, may seem trivial, or flamingly obvious to a Math-Hardscience-Engineering major; but those same tricks are anything but obvious to the rest of us who foolishly listened to our English professors who said, basically, "As long as you can balance your checkbook, you don't need to study mathematical or quantitative things again, just be sure to distinguish between a hermeneutical, text-immanent analysis and a post-structuralist, perpetually evolving text->context->text analysis". Not sure what my point is here ... oh yeah ... if you're baffled by the quantitative exam but basically remember your high school math, then remember that there's a twist to virtually every question. (I plan to take it one last time, in June, in hopes of smashing the 700-barrier.)

I don't think you're a lunatic, and my own story is very similar--especially the part about grades (one prof loves you, the next doesn't). My only advice is, keep your focus. If you do as I did, and try to enter the mainstream of work (which I did, more or less successfully, for almost 30 years now), you may find yourself like me, in late-middle-age, and still dreaming. As to the GRE, it can be beaten, though it can take a lot of effort. (I did have the advantage of a relatively heavy high school math background, which still serves me well, 41 years after HS graduation.) Good luck!