I have been taking a break from all things GRE but now I'm back.
Was waiting until getting my
AWA score in the mail before posting my score
but will get that soon and will post now.
My test experience started out great -- I think the
AWA went very well but I'll have to see what score I get. That score matters for the programs I want to apply to (PhD humanities) along with the verbal.
Nerves may have helped my
AWA section but that's all they helped.
After
AWA came the Quant.
I was not in the state of mind to deal with this. A lot of typing around me so I put on headphones, but with the headphones on I couldn't hear myself think -- obviously not, given my score. I got lots of standard deviation/range type of problems that didn't look too hard but then I think they may have been harder than I thought because I must have got them wrong. I saw no coordinate geometry or probability problems.
I felt pretty decent about my quant skills based on Princeton Review but that is not a good indicator and so I got my *** handed to me. What I had in my head were a bunch of formulas and some simple pie chart (D=rxt) approaches to problems that required much more.
Bottom line I should have stuck with Barron's and grinded through that book more than I did. Also, I did not do the practice tests in Barons for quant which was a mistake. My very low score is a bit of a surprise because the problem level difficulty was high throughout, with a few easy problem mixed in. I felt I would hit around 600-650 but I got much lower.
Next came the verbal.
I was nervous and not feeling good after the quant. I think I may have overthought some easy words in the beginning that in most practice situations I didn't even think about and would get right but here I think I choked and got one wrong, early. I know I must have missed an early problem because I got hit with reading comprehension's around problem 5.
First set of reading comprehension's were easy. I then got hit w/ tough antonyms and analogies I could handle very easily but I knew they were tough words for most people. I think I did well until I hit the second 4 question reading comprehension that was the hardest thing I've ever read in my life. A science passage about god knows what and they were mainly inference type questions. I spent a lot of time trying to get these. After I was done, I was facing time trouble. I had about 10 minutes left with about 15 questions and got a tough sentence completions that had me flustered. Finally, the section was over.
I'm betting that an early miss is what derailed my 700+ score and as is my nature I won't blame the reading comprehension -- even though I probably got 0 rigtht on that impossible passage that was far harder than anything I read on powerprep - the seals, bracken etc. A diagnostic will reveal that when I get my report.
Next, quantitative.
It looked very experimental and so I blew through it, not sure if I was going to score my score anyway. Maybe it was the real thing & the reason for my low quant -- I can always comfort myself with that idea. But I really doubt that it was the real one, given it looked nothing at all like anything from powerprep.
My writing went well and so that gave me a false sense of confidence and I scored my score based on that initial enthusiasm. I should have not scored it but I did.
My analysis is this:
I was somewhat unlucky on the verbal with that beastly passage that was by far harder than anything on powerprep, but it was being nervous that may have cost me the chance to score 700 or higher. I took the "take your time" advice which was not how I took practice tests. I scored 720 on Kaplan's 76 question verbal test -- I didn't worry much about time. I was in the low to mid 700's on all the Baron's model tests for verbal. Powerprep I abused too much to give a real score, but I scored around 700 long ago when I first took it.
As for quant, I was underprepared not with concepts but with not having done enough problems. And though I knew a lot of concepts and formulas -- knowledge is not power in math the way it is with concepts. I had not solved enough problems. That's it. Plus, I focused too much on powerprep. I was suprised -- and pissed off -- how different the test was from powerprep. I should have been closer to Baron's than I was. I did spend a lot of time on quant practice-wise, but I spent too much time learning and not enough time doing/solving -- a typical humanities person mistake.
As for
AWA, I'll have to wait a few days to comment on that.
Will I retake? I'm on the fence. I'm waiting for my score report. The quant is not a big deal for most schools I'm interested in, but such a low score might raise a red flag -- but if a 6 comes in on writing, it might offset it.
My verbal will be either 94 or 95 percentile (anyone know offhand?) and so that will be what they look at. I feel my true level of ability verbally is higher than that, but I do think 670 is a very good score, no matter what field one is applying to. But, I will be applying with many with 700+ scores on verbal. My ace in the hole for grad school is my writing ability (which will be shown in a very strong critical writing sample), not test scores, but I admit to wanting to be at a higher level on both verbal and quant but especially verbal.
The good news is if I do decide to retake, I have time and I can study over the summer and take it in the fall. Most schools nowadays take the higher of scores rather than averaging, so that's good news as well. And also, if I do retake, I'll have to clutch Baron's far closer than I did -- as well as the ETS math review which I only paid minor attention to.
I was pissed off when I left the test center, but then all my friends were so impressed with my verbal score and they're being impressed made me feel better. Now, I've fully accepted my scores, for good or ill, and I am neither happy nor sad but trying to weigh without bias whether it's a good idea to retake or not. (I am busy with things, but I'll have anytime until november to retake if I decide to)