Grunty DaGnome

....and now my math score has gone down another percentile and my writing score has shot up 3 more percentile points since a few days ago to: V: 660 / 164 -- 94 % Q: 740 / 158 -- 79% AW: 5.0 -- 87% I'm going to go out on a limb here and say these are not the final numbers. All I can say is, I'm happy to be a Lit Major, because the way they are dealing with the old math scores seems to prejudice the former test takers quite a bit...and you'd think that would be the more objectively testable skill?!?

Thanks Sigaba. I was pretty tired when I wrote that, so I guess exhaustion can cut either way.

I also feel I have a little chance of getting in. I think about how I've sacrificed my entire summer obsessing over writing samples, statements and every weekend now as I re-obsess and revise it all....oh well. I sort of planned for a 2 year application cycle, anyway. That's how I make myself feel better.

No guess on how we'll fall within the bands, but I am starting to think that the highest band of math scores at least will fall within a higher percentile. I'm basing this guess on the fact that perfect on the old tests seem to have capped out at 94%. Now that the test is supposedly a better diagnostic, maybe they will be able to assign the 95-99th percentile more accurately.

What is interesting is that my old scores as reported on my 2006 mailer put my percentile rankings at V:94% Q:81% and AW: 77%. Now, they are V:94% Q:80% and AW:84%. Weird that my "5" on the written test changed quite a bit, and that's the numerical score that does NOT change under the new scale ?!?

The new scales seem to make much more sense. Now, if with all the interactive software, GRE can figure out how to create a separate math tests, appropriately scaled for English major test takers vs. Economics or Engineering majors. I'm not complaining about the math sections that test things like statistics and correctly interpreting tables of historical data -- it seem that English majors should know things like this in order to avoid drawing and perpetuating false social theories -- but do I really need to spend 2 month brushing up on factoring polynomials? Seriously, I learned how to do that in the 7th grade. I think I got a shiny gold star on my homework that week, and I have never in my life had occasion to factor a polynomial since then. Why give engineering schools a false picture of their applicants, all scoring in the 99% for math, because they beat a bunch of English majors on factoring polynomials or solving for fractional exponents and simultaneous systems of equations? Seems like if you took liberal artsers out of the mix, you'd get a much more accurate picture of the applicants abilities who are actually going to use these skills.

Indeed. People often refer to "close reading" in English departments very colloquially as if it is a theory-free alternative to critiquing a text. Actually, formalism -- as you so correctly call it -- comes with its own host of theoretical and ideological problems. I think what people mean these days when they say "close reading" is that remnant of "New Critical" formalism modern high school English teachers rely on after stripping away all the problematic theoretical issues associated with it; that list of definitions that are useful for describing meter, verse, speakers, narrators, and so on. It's also interesting to think about how critics like DeMan, with his endless observations on "vertiginous" language grow directly out of New Critical attempts to limit all criticism to the poem itself. I recently reread Wimsatt and Beardsley's critique of T.S. Eliot's "The Waste Land," which attempted to argue in all seriousness that it should make no difference to the critic if "Sweet Thames, run softly till I end my song" is an allusion to Spencer or completely "new" language strung together poetically by Eliot. A critique that so squarely frames the inadequacy of a "four corners" approach to reading, is practically a gold-gilded invitation for post-structuralists to set up a tent city in the University quad and declare a movement.

I'd vote for him as greatest living writer.

I went back 10 years after completing my undergraduate degree. It's hard. You spell things wrong from the fatigue of working a 50 hour week and professors jump on stuff like that as if they could correct the exhaustion out of you. It's par for the course. When you go back as an older student, I think you have to pride yourself on different things, like having a clear direction. Not getting caught up in minutia and petty competitive stuff like that is actually a strength if you're at a point in life that you can let it roll off your back. The real problem is how do you find your unflappable direction? I took non-degree classes at another university before I entered an official M.A. program. It helped quite a bit.

Northstar, Look on the brightside. It's a whole new test and a new scale this year, so everyone will be caught somewhat by surprise, including Add Comms. It sounds like you have pretty high verbal scores, so I'm pretty confident you'll make the "cut." Just work on the SOP! Johndiligent's advice is good. Don't mess up your SOP worrying about test scores that are only used in the preliminary rounds and probably never looked at seriously again.

Hmmmm. If UC Riverside doesn't require it, I wonder if the other UC schools follow suit. It seems that many schools recognize the test is indicative of very little.

Columbia University doesn't require the GRE subject test. There must be others who also don't require it.

I agree with orst11. Your scores are not so terribly low. An MBA and significant work experience is strong. If you can get past the dredded "cut off" I'm sure no program will go back and consider the GRE scores once they start evaluating your substantive application.

Another thread pointed out that the scaled score probably corresponds exactly to your raw score. I.e., a V700-800 range probably indicates you missed 9 out of 50 questions. Until this range is weighted against other test takers to determine the missed question's relative difficulty, it's probably impossible to determine your percentile, just as it's impossible to determine your actual scaled score. It seems like a 700-800 provisional score might ultimately be a higher percentile than a 710-800 provisional score if the first test taker only missed the 9 "hardest" questions and the second test taker missed 8 of the "easiest" questions. Even though it doesn't address the percentile question, I'll repost that contributor's comment because it argues pretty conclusively that we all just have to wait .

Nice catch on the page 117 chart! I think you settled the question.

Ugh! I was silly enough to pay 10 bucks for GRE Ace on my iPad. Most of their "flashcards" in the begining were instructions for taking the test. The rest of it was remedial/useless.

I think there is a way to do a drop-in type of late registration, at least I think there was when I took it in '08. Naturally, it will cost you.

Master Plots.

Forget justify it....how do you pay for it?