rawera

The book one already makes me feel better about the future that hasn't happened yet.

Or worse, law school.

I agree, wholeheartedly. Of course, I am only now writing my statements of purpose, so everyone ahead of me can feel a bit better. Re: the rollercoaster statement, getting into graduate school will just be the start of climbing that awful hill, click click click click whoosh here comes dissertation and trying to find a job whooosh

Actually my entire gradcafe forum profile is part of an ETS honey pot. Good show, timshel, you outed me.

Anyone interested in trying to re-assemble the exam via PM?

Indeed, the american lit was rather lacking. I think there was only one major work on it. One passage seemed more like a historical document than work of lit. I don't think any American novels. Though you have to consider that you are dealing with 1000+ years of "British" "English" (though neither of those terms are correct) literary history versus 300 of American.

I would definitely recommend studying the poetry. Prosody, literary devices, and form will DEFINITELY be tested, so those are easy points. I am also of the opinion that no novel or large work is worth reading in full. However, I am also of the opinion that practice tests are worthless (i read explanations of the Princeton practice exam just for the extra facts -- probably useless, and took the ETS one a week before the exam and looked up every name I didn't know. I instead spent my time doing flashcards (compiled from vade mecum) and reading an 180 page word document (ibid, and supplemented along the way) specifically of the poems. I read the princeton review book once. In May? I then did nothing aside from think "I need to study for the GRE" until September 1. That is when I started making the flashcards. I didn't read all the recommended poems until maybe Sep 11. I probably went through the document three times in full. One of them being the day/night before. As a result, I was able to identify 4 poems immediately from my reading. I would recommend reading at least 3 poems (or pieces of large poems) by each author. Especially when the study guides note that the recommended poem differs stylistically. For example, I only saw Carew's Eulogy to Donne listed on the various study guides, even though he was more cavalier re: celia. Same thing for Rochester. Vade Mecum only listed Upon Nothing (though it said it differed from his usual stuff) and his other work is considerably different. Read for content but also for style. Another note on style, Dryden and Pope are both pretty easy to identify based on style alone, but it's quite difficult to differentiate between the two. It may help to be more familiar with similar writers like that (same with Swift, on the one practice test I took I assumed his verses upon own death was pope or dryden) especially when it's a group of heavy-hitters like that, lake poets less so etc. I got caught on the actual exam by a cluster of important poets. There were 2 poems on the exam that I thought were perhaps too "canonical," though ets chose more obscure/less important sections. I wrote a brief "thanks mccrea" on the exam as soon as I saw one, the professor who originally assigned it to me. As for novelists, I didn't really need to know plots or characters as there were lots of passages. Still, I would recommend learning the authors and the titles at least, some plots. Dickens had lots of similar plots; same with James. I knew each Eliot novel fairly specifically. I needed none of that information on the exam. Nothing insightful I can say for theory. I wasn't exactly pleased with it, either.

I was kind of concerned since the only other kid taking the Lit exam in the room finished and left when the proctor called 20 minutes. Now that I've seen your responses I wonder if he just gave up the ship or he's actually the world's fastest test-taker. I finished with 10 left, just enough time to hopefully answer one of the middle/old (I don't even know) sections, sacrificing the opportunity to blindly guess on what I've come to learn was simply shakespeare. Didn't get to review any of the questions I marked as being unsure on. That said, I thought it was easier than I expected it would be. Lots of reading comprehension, which is definitely a double-edged sword. I do agree with the prevailing sentiment that some of the passages were pretty tricky: it was easy to misread one word and come up with a fairly coherent interpretation without any larger context that was incorrect. On the other hand, I too also thought you could follow the answer choices if you didn't quite catch the meaning at first ('cloth, feet' anyone?). I didn't mind the way most of the ID questions were tacked on at the end of a passage, though I powered through the exam in one go. I may be in the minority but I think the infamous editor question is pretty fair. It's not fair, however, to put a poet's 8th or so most famous work (I read the most of his for prep, 7 of them, I guess) as an ID along with 2 authors who are probably as close as any three poets on the exam. "Well there's an s in civilisation...but the other two were expats too...that one wouldn't write such short lines would he? maybe, he did compare a dog and civ that one time...eh, time for the anglo answer" [times up]. googled it immediately upon my return, 3 seconds short of changing to the right answer... I can think of three or so "key" poems from my prep that were on the exam. No, 4. One of the minor poems was studied in the same class as an "important" one (and I only read his other rakeish works because I thought they'd be about sex: they were). It's a lottery, I bet with maybe 30 different questions (though I doubt the ETS question bank runs that deep or varied) scores could change significantly. Oh yeah, narrowing the guy I don't know down to two practically identical theory passages (but I could name the school, of course) was kind of bullshit. Maybe it's just my undergraduate institute, but I felt woefully unprepared for theory, and I took more than a few classes on it. I feel as if there is even less a canon of theoretical readings, again a lottery. Too much post-struct? One last point of aggravation: the colonial piece about collection. come on. Are you supposed to reason that none of the other answers can be right rather than positively identify the author's style?