Mike271828

I was sort of planning on doing it by March at the latest. I need to have it done before October so I can have plenty of time to get my scores and whatnot back, and also so I can have some time to put together applications; but I'd like to have it done earlier rather than later so I can stop thinking about the stupid thing.

I'd like to make an addition: I've noticed that people have stated that the Kaplan and Princeton Review study materials tend to undershoot actual scores, and I'm looking at my practice books seeing a ton of Kaplan and Princeton Review logos. I have an account on 800score and have gotten an 800 on the math in the practice test that I took there; however, I attributed my success to the test being too easy rather than the paper tests I have being harder. Do you think that the stark discrepancies are due to one being too hard, the other being too easy, or perhaps both? Also, thank you all for your responses. It's really helped having some people to chat with.

Real Analysis, Numerical Analysis, Combinatorial Design, Enumeration, Algebraic Coding Theory, Cryptography, (insert 5000 level math class here) And what I hear from you is, "I'm a troll"

It's not that I can't do the problems, I CAN. I mean, I've done problems much harder than these and been quite successful. The difference is that having 4 problems on an hour test in my current classes would be pushing it for time just due to the difficulty and the amount of work required for each question. I go slowly out of a demand for accuracy, and I've found that going even a little bit faster than my internal pace can ruin my precision. What I need to do is learn shortcuts to solutions; however, the issue then becomes my lack of trust in shortcuts as most of these shortcut methods have been gutted in my math classes. I totally agree, but I can't exactly tell myself to stop worrying and then do just that. To tell me "stop worrying" is like me telling you to ignore gravity. You can say what I should do all day long, but what I need is a method by which to do it. I've tried to reason my way out of my concerns, but the nagging doubts still exist in the back of my mind, eating away at any rational evaluations of my abilities and making the exam appear much larger than it actually is. If I did that I'd be watching TV all day! Also, I can't fool myself. I can tell myself that "everything will be fine" but I'll never believe those words. Saying the words doesn't make it true. You could try to tell me that 2+2=5 and repeat it over and over and I may eventually agree with you; however, I still won't believe that 2 apples and 2 oranges yield 5 fruits.

Nah, the bleeding is under control. I didn't stab myself, just cut the side of my hand a little bit. As for disclosure, I've tried to tell my parents about the intensity of these anxiety problems, but neither one of them really think it's that much of a concern. Can't say I blame them, I wasn't this neurotic before college so why should university change that? Of course, this is really the first time that I've injured myself and neither one of them have heard about this yet....prolly shouldn't tell them either... It all started sophomore year; I just felt down at the very beginning of the semester, not depressed but a little off from my usual self. Since then, it seems like every day is a struggle to find motivation, and the only way to lift my spirits is to hang out with a group of friends and forget about school. However, this only works until I'm alone again, at which point it all comes flooding right back. This is actually why I started seeing the therapist in the first place, to try and lift my mood up from the hill it was rapidly descending. My reflections on the GRE go up and down: earlier I was definitely in a valley; however, over time the valleys have been getting deeper and the hills have grown shallower. So though I'm ok right now, I am pretty certain that I haven't seen the last of the emotions that I had this evening.

No, my psychologist hasn't done anything along those lines with me. For the most part he just sits there while I describe my issues, but he never gives me any sort of suggestions for how to get over them.

Thank you for that wonderful bit of insight.

Interesting update: I went far too slow on a practice exam for the quantitative portion, only finishing about 2/3 of the problems in the allotted time. So frustrated with my performance, I began stabbing my practice book with a knife, wound up cutting myself as well, and I am now bleeding all over the floor of my dorm room.

First, I'm pretty darn sure that a 600 verbal isn't going to happen. The only books I've read since freshman year of high school have been math books and various scientific articles. And yeah, I've seen a counselor, but that was the psychologist I mentioned in the opening post. Needless to say, he hasn't helped much.

I'm just looking at the average scores of people getting into grad school (at least into the grad schools that post their averages online) and they're always well above the mean: about 780Q and 600V....given how nervous I get in standardized testing scenarios I'm really not convinced that I can pull off anything close to the averages; more so in the Verbal than in the Quantitative, but I still take waaaaayyy too much time to answer the math questions. The questions I answer I nearly always get correct, but I go far too slow to be able to answer every question. Right now I think I might be able to pull off being able to solve 3/4 of the problems with 95% accuracy and then being forced to guess on the rest due to time. I'm always confident going into my tests here at school, but as soon as the word "standardized" gets tagged on I can barely even function. What has me so uptight is the fact that this one test cannot make my application any better, but it could make it a heck of a lot worse. There is no outcome to the GRE which is favorable to me, only neutral or bad. As you said, my app is strong as is, and I know that; the GRE can only weaken my application with all that I've done while at Auburn and it frightens me to think that one test could be what prevents me from living out my life dream.

My background: Junior Mathematics student at Auburn University20 years old4.0 GPAI plan to get a Ph.D in my field and then teach; however, stopping with a Master's and working for a bit before continuing on is not out of the questionEmployed as a paid tutor for the past 2 years, coordinator of the tutoring program since last yearResearch in Number Theory conducted at a summer REU programPaper based on said research has been accepted for publication in the International Journal of Mathematics and Computer ScienceAlso presented a poster on this research at the Joint Mathematics MeetingsContinuing to do research in the field of Fractional CalculusDue to graduate in December of this year Since my unfortunate discovery that I had yet another standardized test to look forward to (oh yay), I have been driving myself up the wall with all this GRE crapola. See, the problem is that I have traditionally done fairly poorly on standardized exams, at least when compared to the success I usually enjoy within my normal classes. Though I had a 32 on the ACT (not a terrible score), my peers seem to average a 34 while their GPAs are more around 3.2. Also troubling is the fact that my verbal section scores have always been consistently better than my math scores - I care so much about math that, not wanting to screw it up, I inadvertently spend waaaayyy too much time on it. In the practice materials that I have used thus far, I have done fairly well on the quantitative portion (but not stellar - also, I can't give you an exact score as there appear to be no grading mechanisms included in any of the 8 practice books I bought), and I've done terribly on the verbal section (missing probably 3 of every 4 questions). Over time, I've gotten a bit better, but I get so nervous about the actual exam whenever I look at the practice tests that I end up pulling my hair out, rubbing my hands raw, and staring at the ceiling all night unable to sleep due to a driving compulsion to study until my eyes bleed. I started seeing a psychologist; but he's been less than helpful, and during our last meeting he basically told me I'm a nut. I recently started taking valerian root and St. John's wort in an effort to calm down, though not enough time has passed for me to provide an accurate estimate of how much they have actually helped. What's worse, I can't take comfort in my bachelor's degree since you basically can't do anything with a bachelor's in Math; so theoretically, all the hard work and hours of study I've put in could all be for naught just from the results of a single examination. Of course, the endless varieties of grad school horror stories I've been told have certainly contributed to my current neurotic state: you need a 3.7 GPA to get into grad school, you need an 800 quantitative if you want to do mathematics related graduate work, you probably need a 700 verbal and a 5 analytical since the professors like to see people that can write research papers, they want leaders not followers, you should be able to speak and understand a foreign language, if you have a 4.0 GPA it's even more imperative that you do well on the GRE since a poorer GRE score is indicative of grade inflation, etc, etc, etc... At this rate, I think I might really end up in the psychiatric ward if I don't regain some of my composure, but studying only makes me less confident and it seems like the only cure for this disease is to get the GRE over with and to be accepted by a university....ANY university. Of course, this can't be accomplished in its entirety until some time in spring of next year, and in the mean time I'm a nervous wreck and getting worse by the day...I'm not sure how much longer I can put up with this pressure. Any advice you can give me will be greatly appreciated. Thank you, Mike