Sigur

I'll paraphrase everyone by saying that the test blew my mind. I studied essentially the same way everyone else did, looking especially over the Princeton Review guide over and over and making decent study materials. What got me through the test was prosody, quick IDs, and Biblical references, and I KNOW I could have answered most of the reading comprehension questions if I had more than 40 seconds per question! Absurd. We're not human test subjects for tolerance to psychological torture. I didn't sign an IRB form. Come on ETS. What scholar takes 40 seconds to do a lengthy reading and answer a question, having to reread for prosody and other factors??? This test is torture and should be deemed inhumane and a catalyst for suicide. I left at least 50 questions blank because I couldn't even read through them all. I skimmed through once, skipping many questions, sometimes 7 at a time with long reading comp passages, and STILL by the 2nd time through I had only a half hour left. I'm glad that I'm not the only one with an exploded mind, but at the same time I feel the revised general test was MUCH more reasonable. This test is a battle of the mind. I'm a third year MA student with extensive background in French philosophy, and I just didn't have time to differentiate between Lacan, Foucault, Derrida, and others in 40 seconds!!! I'd be interested to see what tenured professors in literature would score on this test. Thank God for prosody, and may the ETS burn in hell for those excruciating, sadistic reading comprehension passages. I would love them if I had time, and some of them were definitely advantageous, but it just got to the point where I wondered where nearly three hours went. And I thought I'd have to go to the bathroom. Boy was I wrong. I didn't have time to breathe. I'd also be interested in knowing how many questions we each left blank. A few people mentioned this, but it might help us all to get a feel for the average. I left at least 50 blank because I was way too cautious in the test earlier on, and that's what I regret most. Been thinking of it all day. The worst part is that only 2 schools out of 4 need my scores, but like an idiot I elected when I registered to send the scores to all 4 schools! If I really bombed, I wonder if the departments that technically "don't count" the subject test will still consider my awful failure!!! Oh dear; and all of this to get a job at a school that will be strangled to death by budget cuts? Please let me know if anyone's in the same boat. We can share the pain.

Glad some of you got in. Unfortunately I was rejected recently, but I realized I really didn't spend nearly enough time on the application. I'm going to apply to USC, UCLA, and UCI next year while basically spending a lot of this year preparing to retake the GRE, take the lit GRE, and a few other things. Kind of overwhelmed. I want to get at least over a 600 on both GRE sections. Not sure if I should stick with the regular GRE or take the revised GRE. The revised will be easier I think, but I'm sure more people will do better, making it perhaps harder to rank as highly. Let me know if you guys have opinions on this. Thanks and good luck!