It’s no secret that I am applying for grad school and that the GRE was a subject of much concern and distress for me. Now that it’s over and the results proved more positive than expected I feel it’s okay to confess that I was really worried that I would do poorly and be forced to acknowledge that I’m not as smart as I thought I was. Standardized tests are never fun, but it’s the implication that they can somehow measure our actual intelligence that makes them horrendously fearsome. Leading up to the test countless friends reassured me that I would do fine, that I am smart, but I didn’t feel smart after I started studying.
The GRE is tough, but not nearly as tough as the prep books make it seem. After I first began studying the math workbook I was not entirely concerned that I would pass the test. I did not remember even the most basic concepts and there was so much that the book insisted I needed to know. It seemed an insurmountable task and I spent the better part of the last month and an entire notebook working out equations, relearning theorems, and memorizing shortcuts. The test itself seemed even harder than I expected and I swear I guessed at nearly half the answers. Luckily, there were only 30 questions and not the 60 I was expecting and despite my feeling woefully underprepared the test barely touched on many of the things I’d been studying. Somehow I scored what for me seemed an unattainably high score, nearly as high as my verbal.
I left the test feeling incredibly buoyed by the results. All the studying paid off and I was vindicated as a smart woman after all, or so I thought. The truth is, the test doesn’t measure intelligence and should my guesses have gone the wrong way producing a low score I would have left that exam feeling humiliated and reevaluating everything I know about myself. I almost let a test dictate who I believe myself to be and that is what’s really scary. I’m no less smart or stupid because of how I did on a test. My verbal score was not what I wanted it to be, barely above that of my quantitative, and it does hurt the ego a bit when that is what I counted on as my dominant strength, but I’m not going to curtail my love of literature because I didn’t get a 750 on verbal.
I understand why they use such exams, but having let my life revolve around studying and knowing that there were days this last month that I felt like a piece of crap because I couldn’t do a damn word problem really upsets me. Mathematics might be the universal language, but I am not fluent and I’m going to have to learn to be okay with that. What angers me most is how much the books cover when so little is actually on the exam. I lost a month studying for that damn test and while I do not regret it and the results speak for themselves, I still feel cheated. How much will I really need to use analogies or geometry in grad school? Was it worth the stress and self-doubts and possible re-evaluation of who I thought I was? I’m not sure. I want to go to school, but I resent that despite all the studying, in the end I felt it was up to luck and not me. Even with good scores in hand, I think I’m a little worse for wear. The GRE hurts.
No comments:
Post a Comment