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#30 - study for/take the GRE

I can officially cross an item off my list!
When Ricky and I knew for sure where he was going to law school, I started looking for English grad school programs. It was April, so I wasn't expecting to be able to start until fall 2011, but I poked around the area we're moving to just out of curiosity...and I found an English M.A. program at a university just 20 minutes away from Ricky's law school! Perfect, right? I was fully prepared to wait until the February deadline and start next August, but I out of MORE curiosity I decided to call the head of the program and see if they could make an exception and review an application for this fall instead.
"Oh, that's no problem," she said. "We actually just extended the fall 2010 application deadline to August 1st!"
To put it mildly, I was excited. I've been practically dying to go back to school since I graduated last May, and the odds of me finding a live classroom (I hate online classes), small (and personal), M.A.-only (Ph.D. candidates take all the good assistantships!), reasonably priced (because I'm poor) English program in close proximity to our new home were a billion to one. It's a Florida state school, so in a year I can even get in-state tuition! Private undergraduate schooling doesn't come with that luxury, so I'm looking forward to taking out significantly less amounts of student loans.
Oh yeah, the GRE. I had to take it, obviously, since I now had the chance to start grad school much earlier than anticipated, so I began studying. I only had about a month, so I didn't study as much as I would've liked...but the requirement for my list was only that I STUDY, not that I study A LOT. I forced myself to re-learn long division and how to find the circumference of a circle, and took the test. You get to see your quantitative (math, in English major terms) and verbal scores right away, and I will admit that I was shocked beyond all belief that I scored 20 points higher in quantitative than verbal. All of you are shocked, too, I'm sure. Luckily, the paper scores (as shown above, albeit backwards) explain that the sections are weighted differently, and reassured me with the information that I scored in the 93rd percentile in verbal! (In quantitative, I scored in the 62nd percentile. Now, doesn't that make more sense?) I can now rest more easily knowing that the right and left sides of my brain are still in unbalanced harmony.
I'm glad that this is the first goal I get to cross off my list, because it's been something I've been putting off for (literally) years. Keep your fingers crossed that my next triumph is number 3: enroll in a master's degree program!
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Comments

  1. Pennilesspo8July 13, 2010 at 10:47 AM

    Yay! I really hope you get in!

    ReplyDelete
  2. AnonymousJuly 13, 2010 at 2:14 PM

    They would be fools to not take you! Good job on the tests; I was also a little confused by your math score, until you explained it more ;) I thought, wait a second, isn't Katie better at English than anyone I know?!

    ReplyDelete

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