Today's Lit in English GRE: WTF?!

[absurd]

Two questions, guys.

1. Anyone else feel a little betrayed by The Princeton Review? (Or maybe we ought to just blame ETS for being sadistic?) My test, at least, didn't encompass the MAJORITY of the material the "Cracking" book ASSURED would make an appearance. I finished on time with only 3 unanswered questions, but who knows how I did on the other 227. Zeugma? Really!?

2. How is the Subj. Test percentile ranking configured? Are we compared with all others ONLY on that test day, in the last one/two/three years, et cetera?

[thinkagain]

Two questions, guys.

1. Anyone else feel a little betrayed by The Princeton Review? (Or maybe we ought to just blame ETS for being sadistic?) My test, at least, didn't encompass the MAJORITY of the material the "Cracking" book ASSURED would make an appearance. I finished on time with only 3 unanswered questions, but who knows how I did on the other 227. Zeugma? Really!?

2. How is the Subj. Test percentile ranking configured? Are we compared with all others ONLY on that test day, in the last one/two/three years, et cetera?

Totally sharing your frustrations. Some of the content was SO trivial. I felt like I was taking a qualifying exam to appear on Jeopardy. Zero questions on Homer, maybe like 2 on Shakespeare, no "A list" appearances, etc.

Good question about percentile ranking. I'd also like to know this.

[JennyFieldsOriginal]

personally, and others have said this as well, i think they're making a big move toward grammar and theory. it puts us in a bit of a pickle because the change seems fairly recent. i got WAY more specific theory questions than any review book would have had me believe, and much more grammar too.

here's relevant info about the scoring: "each new test edition is equated to an existing test edition. in the equating process, statistical methods are used to assess the difficulty of the new test. the scores are adjusted so that the examinees who took a difficult edition of the test are not penalized, and examinees who took an easier edition of the test do not have an advantage." (from the practice book ets sends in the mail)

basically, i took this to mean that they use a fancy statistical method as opposed to the traditional "curve" any of us would be accustomed to. it seems to me that it doesn't have anything to do with who took the test on your particular test day, but is based on their giant pool of crazy questions, how a bazillion people answered them, and the resultant difficulty rating.

i've been obsessing like i'm insane all day about the questions i got wrong. made a list of 20 answers i'm questioning, 10 of which i know for sure are wrong. i'm also trying to figure out how difficult my test was compared to the practice exams i took and the scores i got on those. then i proceeded to create different score scenarios based on possible questions wrong and omitted. so i should be really pleasant for the next three weeks.

if you look at the possible ways you can earn a particular score, you'll see that you can get a TON of questions wrong and omit a bunch and still wind up with a decent score. for instance, you can get a 500 by getting 120 correct, 49 wrong, and leaving 61 blank. hope that makes you feel better, because it's what i'm consoling myself with!

i'm also hoping there were different editions out there today because zeugma was nowhere to be found on mine!

[callmelilyb]

Mine had zeugma on it too. And my test version DID seem really heavy in grammar which is not what I was expecting. Also few appearance from "A List" authors...like I mentioned on another post I had no Paradise Lost, no Homer, hardly any Shakespeare.

I'm not sure about the percentile rankings...I do know that, like JennyFieldsOriginal said, scores are adjusted based on test version difficulty so I am just PRAYING that I happened to get the mmost difficult test version. I did a lot of intelligent guessing and POE. Left about 30 questions blank....I took it in October so I can call tomorrow and get my scores if I really want to waste $13 to get bad news. I know I will, too.