GRE English Lit (Sept/Oct 2014)

[zanmato4794]

do they not do scores by phone anymore? I don't mean to get those who took it in September all excited, but I remember for AP and the first time I took the GRE lit (ugh, 2009), scores by phone were ready a few days earlier than they said they'd be.

[Dr. Old Bill]

do they not do scores by phone anymore? I don't mean to get those who took it in September all excited, but I remember for AP and the first time I took the GRE lit (ugh, 2009), scores by phone were ready a few days earlier than they said they'd be.

 

I don't believe they do, no. At least, I couldn't find any information on that front on ETS' site. I know old threads here (2011 and earlier, I think) mentioned that people could pay $10 and get their score over the phone, but I don't think that's the case any longer.

[jhefflol]

AHHHHHH MONDAY?!?! I'm not mentally prepared for this.

[Dr. Old Bill]

Oh Jhefflol. You just know that Monday's going to come and you'll have a score in the 600s or higher. And if you don't? It's not going to be that big of a deal...particularly since you're casting a VERY wide net application-wise. it's all good!

[queennight]

Good luck to everyone!! (We all probably are panicking for nothing - this is, after all, the least important part of the application. Still, you're all in my thoughts!)

[ProfLorax]

For those taking the test tomorrow, channel your inner drag queen! You all got this. You do!

 

[Dr. Old Bill]

Proflorax, it now occurs to me what our GradCafe English cohort has been missing: an abundance of .gifs! One of the joys of reading through old GC threads is seeing a thread get derailed, only to be confronted with a stunningly appropriate .gif...

[1Q84]

For those taking the test tomorrow, channel your inner drag queen! You all got this. You do!

 

 

As I walk into the testing room...

 

[hreaðemus]

Oh my gosh you guys. Good luck! Get lots of sleep, and hopefully we'll all slay this beast with ease...

 

(P.S. I am not good at .gifs, but if I was tech-savvier I would post one of those little Pusheen cat emoticons scribbling frantically in a notebook.)

[allplaideverything]

Hot damn, that was a fun and bewildering test.

[Dr. Old Bill]

Excellent to hear, Allplaideverything! I was honestly looking at the clock all morning rooting for you guys. Can't wait to hear some more initial post-test impressions!

[unræd]

Hot damn, that was a fun and bewildering test.

 

Congrats on finishing, to you and to everyone else who took it today! "Fun and bewildering" does sort of sum it up, doesn't it?

[sillyrabbit]

It was a crazy 3 hours - definitely exhilarating!

 

Very different than any of my practice tests, though

[Dr. Old Bill]

It was a crazy 3 hours - definitely exhilarating!

 

Very different than any of my practice tests, though

 

Oh yeah? In what way? Just content, or layout? You don't have to get into details -- I'm just curious about how it was different from the practice tests. I found the test I took a month ago to be quite similar.

[sillyrabbit]

Content wasn't exactly what I expected but not too far off

 

Biggest difference I thought was question type (or lack thereof of certain ones covered in the Princeton Review!)

[queennight]

IT WAS ALL INTERPRETATION

 

[Dr. Old Bill]

Ack!

 

You know, the problem with prefab interpretations of literature is that they're usually not comprehensive. It really sucks to have five options when even ten are often not enough.

 

Well, I hope it went alright for you all anyhow!

[zanmato4794]

I have some interesting things to say about today's test. I'm at pains to do so without breaking confidentiality, so please bear with some necessary vagueness.

 

A full five years ago, at the end of my undergraduate career, I took the subject test. Back then, I was very strong on 20th century literature, some theory, and only the absolutely major poems of earlier periods. I had read hardly any Milton, hardly any Shakespeare, hardly any Chaucer, and no Spenser. During the test I was somewhat sick, so I had to take a bathroom break, yet I still had time to read all of the passages and questions, and then go back and make guesses on questions where I could eliminate a few answers. I even had time to do some math during the test to try to guess my score. I left about thirty blank and knew I had guessed on many. When I got a 620, it was on the higher end of what I expected after the test. I don't remember exactly what my raw score was, but I remember noticing that for what it was, my scale score seemed high, and so that version of the test must have been slightly more difficult than the ones ETS has put online over the years (I've found three official ones).

 

In the course of the past five years, I have completed a master's degree and really filled in my canonical knowledge. Even when I was not in school, I was reading, reading, reading. Today, as I started the test, I was really happy at first because I answered thirty questions before I had to leave a blank--and I felt good about those first thirty answers. However, time started going a lot faster than I wanted it to and, without getting too specific, I noticed that most of the questions were of the type that take a while to answer. I flipped forward through the book, thinking that I would find some of the faster type questions, answer a bunch of them, and then, feeling caught up, return to the longer questions with a sense of calm. However: there were very few fast type questions. In the end, I probably left about thirty questions blank, many of which I would have known had I gotten to them.

 

For the past five years, I've had it in my head that knowledge was my problem, not speed, since speed wasn't a problem the first time and since--as anyone who's done some graduate work knows--your abilities are really sharpened at the graduate level. If I was quick enough then, I thought, I would certainly be quick enough now.

 

Honestly, I have no idea how I did. Any score between 590 and, depending on the curve, 720, seems possible to me. This was not the case last time. Last time I would have guessed that I had gotten between about 580 and 630, a much narrower range.

 

The major point I'm making is that this test could very well be changing in a predictable way, and future students should adjust how they study. First of all, the canon is growing, not just linearly through time, but also in breadth as critics demonstrate again and again that, golly, white men aren't the only people with interesting things to say. Secondly, the explosion of theory texts is accreting itself to the body of works students need to be familiar with. I think all of us who have seriously prepared for this test know that they could only test canonical knowledge so much before it started to seem ridiculous, since the body of likely texts would now take a decade to push through.

 

The test is shifting from Jeopardy! sans Trebek to a speed reading contest.

 

It goes without saying that I am very interested in other people's experiences with today's test.

Edited October 25, 2014 by zanmato4794

[Dr. Old Bill]

Excellent comments, Zanmato. Even though I took the September offering of the test, most of what you say resonates with my experience too. As I've said several times already on this thread, I would be no more surprised if I got a 700 than if I got a 500. I suspect this means that scaling is going to be more of a factor than it was on the 2010 practice exam. I have to assume that today's test was 100% different from the one given in September, but from what I've been hearing via this thread and PMs about the test content, the two were quite similar in terms of layout. Overall I recall the test being not too dissimilar from the practice test...but now that I think harder about it, there really weren't many of the "short and simple" questions that were dotted throughout the practice exam. So yes, I expect to see a wider range of scores and more scaling overall.

 

However, I will say this: I still think it's not a test one can really study for, despite what the Princeton book says. While I don't have my results back yet, I think that my age and relative experience helped me a lot. I studied a ton of literature and poetry when I was a teenager, and read a great deal of literature and poetry throughout my twenties as well...all "self-study." Having over a decade and a half of familiarity with a lot of works -- even just glancing familiarity in some instances -- was probably more advantageous to me than spending three months studying specifically for this exam. Other than reading twenty or so GRE-pertinent novels over the summer and taking a single practice test, I really didn't study much, yet I know I didn't do badly at least, even if I don't know (thanks to the scaling question) whether "not badly" means "decidedly average" or "very well, thank you very much."

 

The bottom line is that this test is mostly a boondoggle. If it didn't cost money and have so much pomp and circumstance surrounding it, it would have been rather fun...kind of like a giant Sporcle quiz. But therein lies the problem -- it's trivial. It's NOT a good measure of anything meaningful. I can see a subject test having value for the sciences or more quantitative fields, but literature is inherently subjective, so unless the test is mostly composed of questions like "Who wrote Northanger Abbey" or "Finish the title of this Henry James novella: 'The Turn of the _______" (i.e., things an English major can and should objectively know) it's really kind of pointless.

 

Just my two cents, of course, and there's probably some [strange] person out there who thinks the lit test is a perfect system of gauging the suitability of future Humanities scholars. But it's best to just study however you can, but take the test lightly. I say again: it's not a valid measure of anything meaningful. Hopefully someday it will be eradicated entirely, or at least replaced by something more appropriate.

Edited October 25, 2014 by Wyatt's Torch

[hreaðemus]

Wow. Well, THAT was an experience.

 

So, my alarm didn't go off this morning; I woke of my own accord at 7:25 (my test started at 8:30) and hurtled out of bed, swearing, to dunk my head under the faucet and bolt out the door into the pouring rain at 7:36 AM. I made it to the test site, sans coffee, with the aid of a swift and compassionate taxi driver, at 8:20 - only to wait outside in the rain with a massive crowd of other testers for TWENTY MINUTES before they let us in the building.

 

The questions on the test were long; I am a fast reader, and I barely made it through the whole thing. Many of them were easy; many of them were, I thought, less so. I missed a few I should have known, and got lucky with one set of questions on a particular poem  I had idly, randomly perused the night before. I think the test was harder than the ones I've taken in practice, and incorporated more modern and theoretical material, as zanmato4794 has said.

 

I don't know how all this will affect my scores, but I'm guessing I fell somewhere in the 550-630 range. All in all, I wish I felt more confident - but after standing in the rain at 7:45 AM imagining what would happen if I couldn't GET to the test site, I am grateful simply to have gotten through the experience. 

[Dr. Old Bill]

It sounds dumb, but I'm really proud of all of you. I'm kind of reliving the feeling of completion I experienced last month. As little as the exam probably matters in the long run, it's still a monolithic undertaking when it's ahead of you...and such a relief when it's over and done with.

[1Q84]

I was very upset by my experience. ETS was completely disorganized and our test room happened to be beside a full-blown concert, which shook the walls of the room as we took the test. We started an hour late because who knows? They just felt like it.  It was all very frazzling.

 

That being said, I had the same experiences as others I think. I ran out of time and ended up leaving a lot more blank than I would have hoped. Many, many long passages that had to be read in their entirety because of "tone" type questions.

The material, to me, was way off from what was suggested in Princeton. Even the works and authors I recognized were being tested for very obscure details.

 

That all being said, the test results are scaled?!

[Dr. Old Bill]

Damn, 1Q84. I feel for you. I really do. The really lousy part is that you have no recourse. I would, however, file a complaint with ETS. It might not do anything, but in the remote chance that it does, it might help the next crop of test-takers avoid such a disruption.

 

The saving grace is that the test doesn't matter too much in the long run. And the results are indeed scaled, which I think is probably a good thing for this year's instantiations.

[1Q84]

Thanks for the commiserating words, Wyatt!

 

I think I will file a complaint. Y'know, the proctor said at the end that they filed two complaints as well but, yeah, I'm not expecting any results (though 25 pts added to everyone's test would be nice )

 

Dedicated to all fellow takers who passed through the flames today:

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RnE5ZtQQ_zI&spfreload=10

[jhefflol]

I was very upset by my experience. ETS was completely disorganized and our test room happened to be beside a full-blown concert, which shook the walls of the room as we took the test. We started an hour late because who knows? They just felt like it.  It was all very frazzling.

 

That being said, I had the same experiences as others I think. I ran out of time and ended up leaving a lot more blank than I would have hoped. Many, many long passages that had to be read in their entirety because of "tone" type questions.

The material, to me, was way off from what was suggested in Princeton. Even the works and authors I recognized were being tested for very obscure details.

 

That all being said, the test results are scaled?!

 

Did you take your test at CSULA? That's where I took mine last month and I was shocked at the way the admin really didn't care about timing. My test started at 8:55 because apparently being told to show up at 8:30 is showing up 30 minutes before the test start. It was odd and anxiety-inducing to sit at the testing center for over an hour.